


Roll Down This Unfamiliar Road

by K_R_Closson



Series: Settle Down, It'll All Be Clear [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Rule 63 Clint Barton, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-06-07 19:20:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 47,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6820870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_R_Closson/pseuds/K_R_Closson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Clara Barton, Codename: Hawkeye and how she makes a reputation for herself as an agent of SHIELD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Character death in this chapter. Clara makes her first mission kill and there is some trauma that accompanies that. See end notes if you want to know who it is she kills.

Agent Clara Barton has a reputation for being a sharpshooter that’s never killed anyone. Sharpshooter and zero kill count rarely go together, but she makes it work. It means she almost exclusively works with Agent Coulson or Sitwell, because other handlers don’t understand that the note in her file that says  _ will kill only if necessary _ doesn’t mean put her in situations where it will become necessary. 

She’s the best marksman SHIELD has, and she puts that to good use, taking out the enemy in a nonlethal manner.

When she graduated from Junior Agent to Level 1 Agent, Agent Coulson had said, “Congratulations,” then, “Time to pick your codename. Sitwell says Eagleeye, but you’ve already got a better one.”

“Hawkeye,” she told him.

“Dropping the Amazing?” he asked, a smile tugging at his lips.

“That was kid stuff,” she had said. What she didn’t say was that she just turned twenty and that  _ a nine year old that can shoot is unique enough _ but that  _ someone in their twenties who never misses a shot? That’s just practice. Nothing special about it _ .

It had crushed her when Trickshot said that to her, but as she’s gone through SHIELD, she’s realized he’s right. It was something special, or,  _ amazing _ , what she could do with a bow as a kid. But what she can do now? That  _ is _ practice. Years of it, and she’s proud that she’s as good as she is, proud of all the work she’s put into it.

So she becomes Agent Barton, Codename: Hawkeye, and she continues to never miss a shot. Gotta do the Hawkeye name proud, after all.

~*~

Clara’s called to Director Fury’s office for a mission prep which is her first clue that something isn’t quite right. It’s always Agent Coulson or Sitwell who calls her in for prep, and it’s almost always in one of their offices. 

When she gets to Director Fury’s office, she hesitates, because Agent Gerber is already in there, and Director Fury must have double scheduled or something.

She looks over at Robert, Fury’s secretary. “I’m here at the right, time, yeah?”

Robert consults his schedule. “Mission prep with Fury and Gerber at 11am. You’re actually 2 minutes late.”

Clara frowns at him, but knocks on Fury’s open door.

“Agent Barton,” Fury greets. “You know Agent Gerber.”

“I do,” Clara says. 

One of the trainees’ favorite pranks is to fill his locker with baby food. Clara thinks it’s stupid, but Fury tolerates it because there’s worse trouble they could get in. Agent Coulson likes to change the locks on Gerber’s locker periodically to test the trainees’ lock picking abilities.

Clara works for kind of a weird organization.

“He’s the agent overseeing an important mission,” Fury says, “and he’s personally requested you as his eyes in the sky.”

“Not quite the sky,” Gerber says, “but we think you’ll be integral to the op.”

“You know my conditions?” she asks.

Gerber’s lips press together which means he does know, but he’s one of the agents who doesn’t like that she sets her own rules. She’ll have to be on guard the whole mission then. 

“I do,” he says. “It shouldn’t be a problem. It’s a simple protection detail.”

“Who are we protecting?” Clara asks instead of saying, nothing is ever simple.

“Not who, what,” Gerber says. He hands her a picture of a vault door. 

“We’re protecting someone’s secret stash?” Clara asks, the question directed at Fury.

“I owe him a favor,” Fury says.

“Alright,” Clara says. “What’s so important in there, and who’s trying to take it?”

“Need-to-know basis on the first,” Gerber says. “He’s a paranoid sort. Thinks if word gets out what he’s got in there then he’ll only get more trouble. Nothing concrete on the thieves. There’s a group of them - three to five depending on the job - that have been hitting high-end vaults.”

“And our paranoid friend thinks they’re coming for him, or do we have reliable intel that he’s going to be hit soon?”

“He’s a collector,” Fury says. “Mostly of things that are worth money, but he’s accidentally stumbled upon some different kinds of items. Items that are part of a collection.”

“And other collections have been raided?” Clara guesses.

Fury nods. “It’s best that his...speciality item doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“Am I cleared to know what that is?”

“If the break-in is successful then yes,” Fury says. “You might be needed to retrieve it. If all goes to plan, then no.”

“Okay,” Clara says, because you don’t agree to work for a secret agency without expecting they’re going to keep secrets from you. “What’s the plan, then?”

Fury waves his hand and Gerber packs up his file.

“We’ll go meet the rest of the team to give the full prep.”

“Wow,” Clara says. “I warranted a special talk?”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Fury says.

Clara laughs and follows Gerber to his office where Harris, Mariah, and Goldberg, a level 3, are waiting.

“Aw shit,” Mariah says when she sees Clara. “I was told this was going to be an easy mission. You always mean complications.”

Clara grins and sits down next to her. “Aw, don’t be like that. You know I’ve got your back whenever the complications start to pop up.”

“Alright,” Gerber says, calling their attention. “We’re on basic security detail.” He hands out pictures of the vault. “We keep anyone from getting into that. Provided we fail at that simple objective, we put down anyone who escapes the vault and return what they’ve stolen.”

“Simple enough,” Goldberg says. He adjusts his glasses. “Why so many of us on it?”

“Both because of what’s in the vault - no you aren’t cleared to know - and the team that’s coming after it. They’re highly specialized. They call themselves Carson’s Chislers.”

“That’s a stupid name,” Clara says. “Where’d they get it?”

“Really?” Harris asks, looking over at her. “You’re talking shit about other people’s names?”

“Hawkeye is cool,” she says, “And pretty damn accurate. Their ringleader named Carson? They chisel their way into vaults?”

“Nothing is known about the members,” Gerber says. “Like I said, they’re good at what they do. Masks to hide their faces, gloves to keep from leaving fingerprints, all that. Normally, people don’t even know they’re coming for them until it’s too late. We’re just lucky we caught a pattern.”

“They don’t seem like people who would do patterns,” Clara says. “If they’re as smart as you say.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Gerber says. “And we’re going to take advantage of this one. Now, priority is keeping the contents of the vault in the vault. Secondary objective is getting the thieves. Alive.”

“Well, that explains why I’m here,” Clara says with a grin. “Do you have the schematics of the vault? I want to see how they’re going to try and get in.”

They spend the rest of the meeting discussing possible entry points, what kind of tools Carson’s Chislers will have, and where they’re going to put up their security. Clara agrees with everything but where Gerber wants to put Harris, because she thinks it leaves the vault vulnerable to someone using the gas vent to slip in.

“Who’s going to squeeze through that?” Gerber asks.

“I could,” Clara says. “It’s how I would get in. A gas mask, some rope, and it’d be easy. We should have someone watching the vents.”

No one takes her seriously, and when Clara tries to bring it up to Agent Coulson he just tells her, “I’m not the agent in charge.”

It’s a bullshit answer, and it pisses her off, and she spends a few hours in the shooting range clearing her head. She knows she’s got a bit of a reputation for not following the rules the exact way they’re laid out, but her instincts are rarely wrong. 

There’s something off about this plan, and the only person who trusts her instincts is insisting he can’t do anything because of fucking agent etiquette.

And they wonder why she doesn’t like their rules.

~*~

“This is the kind of mission I can get behind,” Mariah says.

They’re at Langton’s mansion, and Mariah’s sunbathing by the pool in a skimpy string bikini. She’s playing the role of Langton’s new arm candy, because a sudden increase in security might put Carson’s crew off from making their run at the vault. 

Clara’s part of the wait staff, which is why she’s giving Mariah a (virgin) daiquiri. Harris and Goldberg get to play at being security, but they’re  _ bad _ security, trying to make it look like the vault has weaknesses it doesn’t.

As if the crew’s recon is so shitty they’re not going to realize they’re being lured into a trap.

Not for the first time, Clara wishes it was Agent Coulson leading the mission.

“I hope you get sunburned,” Clara says.

Mariah laughs. “Jealousy’s not a good look on you.”

Clara’s tempted to dump her in the pool. Instead, she just shakes her head and goes back to the kitchen. 

~*~

It takes three days of playing pretend before they get to do what they actually came here to do. Clara’s in the kitchen  _ not _ washing dishes because that’s not her job when Gerber’s voice comes through the comms.

“Movement spotted at the perimeter of the property. Get in position.”

Clara strips out of the white button up and awful black pants so she’s just in her SHIELD suit, and she jogs to her perch where she pulls on her gloves. R&D still hasn’t quite gotten the new arrows right yet, which means she’s still using dipped arrows.

Mostly it means she has to layer up, but she doesn’t mind, because it means they aren’t sending her to any deserts. 

“Want me to engage before they reach the property?” Clara asks.

“I want you to stay where you are and do as you’re told,” Gerber answers.

Well, then, she thinks, getting her bow out. She’s up high, where she likes to be, shielded by some weird modern statue that’s supposed to be standing guard over the vault door or something. The inner workings of rich people’s minds elude her.

It’s a good enough perch, and she’s found that very few people ever look up when they’re looking for danger, so she leans against the statue to wait. 

If two or more of the crew come at the vault from the front, her orders are to put them down. 

Clara would bet her entire year’s salary that they’re not going to break in from the front. Burrow down beneath and explode the floor? Maybe. Drill from the top? Possible. She’s still voting for the air vent. The problem with having a vent that releases stun gas in the event that your vault is broken into is that you’ve created an additional way to get into your vault.

She’s starting to get bored when she hears a sound.

The vault is opening.

From the  _ inside _ .

“Should’ve just trusted the lock,” she mutters.

“What was that, Hawkeye?” Gerber asks.

“Movement from inside the vault,” she says. “Shoot on sight?”

“Wait for all members to exit the vault,” Gerber says. “We don’t want anyone getting away.”

“Two hostiles headed your way,” Mariah says. She’s in Langton’s bedroom, protecting him in case things go south. “Too dark to see what they’re armed with.”

“Coming at the vault from two directions?” Clara asks. “Gerber, do I wait for their backup before I shoot?”

“No. Shoot as they come from the vault. Be advised that backup is coming.”

“For me or them?” she asks.

“Both.”

She grins and nocks her first arrow. A head pokes out of the open vault door, someone looking around to make sure there aren’t any guards. It makes Clara wonder where exactly the guards are. And then she realizes, she hasn’t heard the alarm trip.  _ Any _ of the alarms.

These people are pretty good.

The first figure emerges from the vault, a large, lumpy sack thrown over his shoulder.

Well, she amends,  _ someone _ in their crew is good.

Once she sees two figures she fires. Arrow through the wrist then arrow in the thigh. Both figures look up, the ‘O’ of their surprise framed by the hole in their ski masks, before they slump to the floor.

“Two men down,” Clara says, “Waiting for -”

Pain blossoms in her leg, and she looks down to see a knife sticking out of her thigh. She grabs the statue to keep from toppling off her perch.

“Most people don’t look up,” a voice she’d recognize anywhere says.

She looks down to see a third figure in a mask, holding a knife in one hand and picking up the bags of his fallen partners with the other.

“Barney?” she demands.

“Hawkeye,” Gerber says in her ear. “Report.”

She turns her comm off and leans her weight against the statue so she can gather up her bow. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he says. “But I don’t care. Stay there and don’t stop me or the next knife goes through your throat.”

“You aim’s not that good,” she says. 

He slings the three bags over his shoulders and starts to back away, careful to keep his eyes on her.

She grabs an arrow and shoots, the arrow punching through each bag before hooking into the wall.

“Grappling hook arrow,” she says. “You want your loot or your escape more?”

Barney growls, tugging at the bags, but it only makes them rip further, money and jewelry and some other things spilling out of them.

Clara turns her comm back on. “Vault breached. What’s the retrieval item.”

“Hawkeye!” Gerber splutters and she knows she’s going to get shit for this later, but for now he just says, “Faberge egg. This one’s emerald with gold overlay.”

She’s pretty sure she sees it rolling down the other end of the hallway. “Got my eyes on it. Two crewmembers down, one deciding whether or not he wants to escape.”

“Back-up’s almost to you,” Gerber says. “And keep your damn comm on.”

“Who’re you talking to?” Barney demands, gathering up what he can carry easily.

“You’re not the only one with friends,” Clara says. “Mine are just better.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Barney says. 

He throws another knife at her and then disappears around the corner. She dodges, the knife grazing her neck but barely drawing blood.

“Told you you’d miss,” she mutters. Louder she says, “One hostile escaped on foot. Permission to pursue?”

“Permission denied. Retrieve the egg. Harris is tracking the hostile.”

Which means Barney’s probably going to end up dead. Clara can’t focus on that. She eases down from her perch but nothing can keep her landing from jarring her injured leg. She stares at the knife handle sticking out from it and says, “Just FYI, sustained a minor injury.” 

She picks up the eggs. It’s a little bigger than her fist, and it’s emerald with golden vines and flowers traced over it. There’s a clasp, but she leaves the egg closed. Her mission was to retrieve, not poke around.

“Egg secured,” she says.

“Alright, Hawkeye. Rendezvous with the team. Unless, do you need assistance getting out?”

“I can walk,” she says. Movement at the corner of her vision has her drawing her bow. “Not alone. Is it one of us?”

“No,” Gerber says. “Help is on the way, though.”

Clara moves so she’s got the protection of the statue. It hurts to put weight on her leg.

“Your break-in failed,” she says. “Might as well try and escape or you’re going to prison.”

“I’m not going anywhere without the egg you’ve got in your pocket,” another voice she knows says.

“Fucking hell,” Clara says. What is this - a twisted kind of reunion?

“Hello, Clara,” Trickshot says, removing his mask. “Now, give me the egg, and you’ll get out of here with your life.”

“Hawkeye?” Gerber says. “Everything okay?”

Everything is not okay. Of course the heist she was sent to interrupt was being led by her former mentor and her brother. She should’ve -

“Carson’s Chislers?” she says. “You serious?”

Trickshot laughs. “Something to amuse myself with. Now give me the egg.”

“You have to know I’m not giving it to you,” she says.

“This isn’t like the trailer,” Trickshot says and his voice is getting closer. “I’m not going to just let you run away. You’re going to give me what I want or I’m going to kill you.”

“I can’t believe you dragged Barney into this,” Clara says. She gets an arrow ready. A few more steps and Trick should be close enough that he’ll have no cover when she shoots him.

“What did you think we were going to do after you left?” Trick asks. “You were the star of the show. Everything fell apart when you left. When you  _ abandoned _ us.”

“Fuck off,” Clara says. She didn’t abandon them. They were stealing, and she made the choice to do something different with her life.

“I’m not bitter,” Trick says. “This is much more profitable. And Barney’s a much better partner. Just stupid enough to be manipulated. You would’ve been a nightmare to control.”

Clara just needs to keep him talking, keep him distracted, and back-up will be here. Blood is trickling down her leg, and she has to put her full weight on her non-injured leg so she can stay standing. 

“It’s why he thinks the prize here was pearls and why you have the real prize in your pocket. You’re going to give it to me, Clara. One way or another.”

“Don’t think so,” Clara says, “You didn’t say please.”

“I made you,” Trick says and she can hear the first hint of anger in his voice. 

It instinctively makes her want to cower, to find some place to hide, because that anger is what led to sharp stinging slaps across her face or bruises pressing into her arms. It was that anger that made her think she’d run away from her father to find someone just as bad. But then -

“These people you’re working for don’t know you,” Trick says, gentler now.

He was always gentle after a flare up, petting her cheek or giving her a hug, telling her he was sorry but it just frustrated him when she didn’t shoot right, didn’t shoot the way he taught her. He was choosing to train her, to spend time on her, and couldn’t she just do what she was taught?

Clara’s eyes sting with familiar tears.

“You don’t know me, either,” she says. She spins out from behind the statue, bow raised and ready to fire. 

But he was closer than she expected, and he knocks the bow out of her hands, and it skitters across the floor. He’s on her in a second, and she wishes she’d spent more time practicing her hand-to-hand, because she goes down easy, grunting when the impact jars her leg.

“Barney got to you first?” Trick asks. “Didn’t kill you. Boy was always soft.”

Clara bashes her head into his and when he reels back, she grabs the knife from her leg and stabs at him with it. She hits his arm and he hisses, backhanding her with his uninjured hand. She hits her head on the floor and it dazes her for a moment, long enough for him to reach into her pocket and pull out the egg.

She’s got a bloody knife in her hands, but he’s got what he came here for, and he grins, eyes manic in the dim lighting of the hallway.

“I’m not soft,” Trick says, and he pockets the egg before pulling out a knife, longer than the one she has and serrated, like it’s meant to cause pain.

She twists onto her stomach, makes a grab for her bow and gets it just in time to feel the bite of the knife in her calf.

She cries out, kicking at him even as she twists back so she can point her recovered bow and arrow at him. She’s only got one arrow and this close, she’s not going to miss what she aims for.

“You won’t do it,” Trick says.

“You don’t know me,” she says and puts the arrow right through his throat.

This close, the arrow goes right through him, and she can see the blood bubble up in the hole she’s made. She can hear him gurgle, try to say something, but no words come out as he topples sideways to the floor. 

His knife falls out of his hand and clatters against the tile.

“Hawkeye?” there’s a voice in her ear but it sounds far away. “Hawkeye, report.”

Who’s Hawkeye, she wonders, as she crawls towards the body. It has something she needs. This had a purpose.  _ She  _ had a purpose.

“Hawkeye, hang in there, QB is on her way.”

There’s that voice again, Clara thinks. She digs through Trick’s pockets until she pulls out an egg. This is what she wants. Hawkeye needs an egg for her nest. 

She can’t help it, she giggles.

Giggles turn into laughter, and before she knows it, she’s clutching her sides like she’s going to laugh so hard she’s going to fly apart. 

“Hawkeye is compromised,” the voice says. “I repeat, Hawkeye is compromised.”

“Hawk’s got her egg,” Clara giggles. “Wonder what it’ll hatch into.” She looks over at the body next to her. “Do you know what it’ll hatch into?”

The body doesn’t answer.

“You’re supposed to have the answers, Trick,” she says. “Isn’t the the point of a teacher?”

Trick still doesn’t answer. 

Oh well.

Clara cups the egg between her hands to keep it warm. Eggs need warmth in order to hatch.

She’s still sitting there when two figures approach her. 

No masks - friendly?

One of them, the woman, smiles, cautious, as she approaches. “Clara? Clara, it’s Mariah. The mission’s over. You can stand down.”

Clara looks at the pool of blood she’s sitting in, some of it hers, some of it Trick’s. She points to her leg, cut up in two places. “Think standing down is the only standing I can do.”

“Agent Barton, report,” the man says, and Clara knows that voice. It’s the voice from her ear.

“Retrieval successful,” she says. She hands the egg over. The man will take good care of it. There’s something else.  _ Someone _ else. “Two members of the crew knocked out, one dead, one missing.” She looks between Mariah and Gerber - names, these people have names. “The missing one. Was he found?”

“Escaped,” Gerber says.

“His name is Charles Bernard Barton,” Clara says. Her limbs feel heavy. Her eyelids feel heavier. “That should help you track him down.”

“Barton?” Gerber asks.

“Brother,” Clara says. “Older.”

“Shit,” Mariah says.

“No kidding,” Clara says.

It’s the last thing she says before she passes out.

~*~

She wakes up in a hospital, her leg throbbing and at first all she can think is  _ dad is going to kill me _ . 

And then she processes that she’s not five years old anymore and that the man at her bedside isn’t her father.

Agent Coulson is in a visitor’s chair, with a table on wheels pulled up close so he has a place to put his laptop. At the sound of her heart monitor skyrocketing, he looks up, relief clear in his eyes when he sees she’s awake.

“Good morning, Agent Barton.”

“Morning?” she asks.

“You slept through the night,” he says. “Aided by some drugs. Your leg is going to be fine. Two new scars but with some physical therapy you’ll have full range of motion back.”

She nods. There’s something tickling the back of her brain, something important, something significant.

“Post-mission medical doesn’t get you out of paperwork,” Agent Coulson tells her, “In case you’re thinking of trying this stunt again.”

Clara laughs. “Two knife wounds aren’t enough to catch me a break. What if I go for three next time?”

Agent Coulson smiles.

The thing she can’t think of has to do with Trick. She - he - oh!

“Trickshot,” she says, and Agent Coulson’s smile slips away. “Real name: Buck Chisholm. Worked for Carson’s Circus. Hence, Carson’s Chislers. I knew it was a stupid name. I should’ve known it was them.”

Agent Coulson nods.

“ _ You _ should’ve known it was them. We had shitty intel.”

“You did,” Agent Coulson agrees.

“Barney got in through the vent,” she says. “I  _ told _ Gerber that was going to be the entry point. I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Agent Coulson says, and she thinks he sounds genuine.

She shrugs. “Wasn’t your op. Didn’t want to step on any toes. Does this mean I can go back to just having you and Sitwell? At least you listen before you tell me no.”

“The op could’ve run better,” Agent Coulson says, careful, like he’s waiting for her to completely lose it.

Yeah, she’s pissed at Gerber, but she’s not going to start reaching for scalpels or anything. “Would’ve been, if you were in charge.”

She leans back against her pillow. Her leg doesn’t hurt, but she can feel the blood pumping through like a second pulse. It’s stronger in the calf wound than the thigh wound. She still can’t believe Barney threw a knife at her.

She touches her neck, the skin rough where it’s regrowing. At least his aim is still for shit.

“No wonder Trick liked me better than him,” Clara says.

Her fingers pause on her neck, her entire body falling still like she’s up in a perch.

The heart rate machine begins beeping rapidly.

“Trick,” she breathes. She turns to Agent Coulson, eyes wide, frightened. “Coulson - I -” she looks up at the ceiling.

She killed Trickshot.

Put an arrow through his throat. 

“He taught me how to shoot,” she says. And she used that teaching to kill him.

She feels another laugh bubbling up inside of her, but she squashes it down. 

“I had nothing,” Clara says. “I shoveled elephant shit before he decided to train me. Before he chose me over Barney. He  _ made _ me.”

“You made you,” Agent Coulson tells her.

“I killed him,” she whispers. Her clean record now splashed with red. She wants to laugh again but she doesn’t have the energy. “I guess I should update my file. Is there a kill stamp or do I have to write it out?”

“Your file says will kill if necessary,” Agent Coulson tells her. “Nothing has changed except that you reached your first situation where it was necessary.”

“Everything’s changed,” she tells him, and turns on her side so she can’t see him.


	2. Chapter 2

Clara refuses to do her physical therapy in medical, and SHIELD is surprisingly obliging. Where they won’t budge, of course, is her psych eval. She knows she has to have it, knows why, but no amount of knowing makes it easier.

And nothing stops her from walking out when they’re colossal idiots.

She’s only a little bit surprised when Agent Coulson goes to Classroom 3 and looks up at the ceiling where she’s hiding in the vents. 

He sits down at one of the desks. “Is this how we’re going to talk?” he asks.

“I don’t want to talk,” Clara says. She’s tired of talking.

“Psych said you left abruptly,” Agent Coulson tells her. “They were concerned.”

“I’m not going to off myself,” she says.

“Good to know. Dr. Suresh thinks he said something wrong.” 

“He did. For a bunch of doctors they’re pretty stupid.”

“They think in particular ways,” Agent Coulson says. “You don’t always think in the same ways. If it makes you feel better, it means they don’t understand you as much as they were afraid you would.”

“Except I can’t get back into the field until they clear me, and I don’t want to talk to them anymore.”

“Will you talk to me?” Agent Coulson asks. “They wouldn’t tell me where your session went wrong due to confidentiality.”

Clara’s stretched out in the air vent, her head resting on her folded arms. It’s not exactly roomy up here, but she likes it, likes the feeling of being enclosed, kind of like a blanket wrapped tight around her. It makes her feel safe.

“They said I didn’t have a choice,” Clara says. 

“We’re talking about Trickshot?” Agent Coulson asks, no judgment, no anything in his voice. It’s his calm, you can tell me anything, agent voice. 

“I had a choice,” Clara says. “I didn’t have to kill him.”

“He would’ve killed you.”

“Yeah. That makes it a shitty choice, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t have one.”

Agent Coulson is quiet.

“Life is full of shitty choices,” Clara says. “Stay at home with a dad who beat the shit out of me or run away who the fuck knows where with Barney. Stay at the circus where everything was a lie or try my luck on my own. Roam the streets of New York City eating pigeons or trust some guy in a suit who’d stalked me across the country. Kill my mentor or let him kill me.”

Clara laughs, the sound sharp and echoing in the vents.

“It was my choice. I’m not going to brush it off. I’m going to own it.”

“I recommend telling Dr. Suresh that during your next session,” Agent Coulson says. 

She probably should’ve just said that to begin with instead of running away. At least Agent Coulson’s nice enough not to say that.

“Have you killed a lot of people?” Clara asks. 

She can see Agent Coulson through the cracks in the vent, which means she sees the way he sits straighter for a moment before relaxing again.

“I have.”

“How do you live with it?”

“By trusting I made the right choice. When I fire my weapon, it’s because people I care about are in danger. I sleep at night, because I know the person I killed would’ve killed my unit or my agents if I hadn’t killed them first.”

“He just wanted the egg,” Clara says. “He only fought me because I wouldn’t give it to him. And because I was being a smartass.”

Agent Coulson chuckles.

“An egg seems a stupid reason to kill someone.”

“As someone who knows what the egg is, trust me when I say it isn’t.”

“Yeah,” Clara says. “I’m not fishing for information.”

“I know,” Agent Coulson tells her. “Subtlety isn’t one of your strengths. If you wanted to know about the egg you’d just ask.”

“And you’d tell me it’s classified.” Clara continues to peer through the vent. “How long did it take backup to get to me?” she asks. How much longer did she need to hold out before she had help?

“That,” Agent Coulson says, “is a path that leads to not sleeping at night.”

“I could’ve shot him in the hand or the shoulder,” Clara says. “Shock probably would’ve kept him still enough until the paralytic kicked in.”

“You could’ve,” Agent Coulson agrees. “But you didn’t.”

From anyone else, his words would sound like an accusation. 

“Yeah,” Clara says. “I didn’t.”

“You made a choice.”

And now she has to live with it.

~*~

Clara’s first mission following the Trickshot incident brings her to Boston. More specifically, to MIT. Tony Stark is spending a week at his alma mater, giving demonstrations, delivering lectures, and inspiring the next generation of engineers. 

“I don’t see why they need us,” Madison says, looking at the layouts of the buildings they’re going to be in. “Captain Rhodes is going to be with Stark the whole time.”

Clara shrugs. She read Captain Rhodes’s file. He went to MIT with Stark, at a normal age, and pursued an aerospace engineering degree. Then he joined the Air Force, where he became a pilot and rose quickly to the rank of Captain. 

From what Clara can tell, Captain Rhodes is the only friend Stark has, and he’s here not only as a fellow alumni of MIT but as both Stark’s wrangler and bodyguard.

“Everyone knows Captain Rhodes is protecting him?” Clara says.

“Plus a dozen SI bodyguards,” Madison says.

“But since even Stark doesn’t know we’re here, will any potential threats?”

“I don’t care why we’re here,” Mariah says over the comms. “I get to wear fancy dresses and eat as many canapes as I want. I love missions like this.”

“How come you always get the fun stuff?” Madison asks.

“Stark basically makes all the tech that allows SHIELD to run,” Clara says. “The least we can do is help keep him alive.”

“You lucked out with this mission,” Madison says. “Do you still blush when you see him?”

Clara fights to keep the blush off her cheeks. “I don’t have a crush on Stark.”

“You’re learning to code because of him,” Madison says.

“I can make the hologram dance,” Clara says. “That’s all I wanted to be able to do.”

“You programmed it to  _ randomly _ dance,” Madison says. “I heard Richards almost shit himself when he was taking the trainees through a simulation and suddenly the targets were doing the macarena.”

Clara grins. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”

“You guys have weird ideas of fun,” Mariah says. “Ooh, I think that’s a Victoria’s Secret model. Think if I play my cards right she’ll let me wear her wings?”

“ _ We _ have weird ideas of fun?” Clara mutters but she’s smiling.

~*~

Clara goes to one of Stark’s lectures wearing an oversized hoodie and glasses with thick rims but fake lenses so they don’t give her a headache. It’s a stupid disguise, one he’ll see right through if he spots her, but she’s banking on him not being able to pick her out of a giant lecture hall.

He talks about how great engineering degrees are and how the whole world opens up for you after graduation. 

“You get to make shit,” he says and there are scattered laughs, because their guest lecturer just swore. “And you can make whatever you want. Your dad served in the war? You can make prosthetics for vets. You’re afraid of water? Great, we always need more bridges. You can -” a hand lays on his shoulder, and Clara’s eyes narrow as she recognized Obadiah Stane.

Stark stands up straighter, shaking the hand off. “Of course, weapons are the best,” he says. “Who doesn’t like to blow shit up?”

The crowd laughs again and he launches into a Stark Weapons stump speech that Clara tunes out.

~*~

“I don’t like Stane,” she says when they’re in the hotel room eating Chinese take out. The night crew is working, which means Mariah, Clara, and Madison get a break.

“Stark does,” Mariah says, taking her earrings off then carefully wiping her makeup from her face. “I heard Stane’s the one who hooks him up with all his models.”

“And drugs,” Madison says. She looks over at Clara. “Sorry. Your boy’s not perfect.”

“He’s not my boy,” Clara says. “You think Stane’s encouraging the drug habit?”

“Why?” Mariah says. “Drugs scramble your brains. You don’t scramble your best inventor’s brains.”

“You do if he doesn’t want to invent what you want,” Clara says, thinking about the way Stark had sounded talking about bridges and prosthetics, how hopeful, how interested, and then how robotic he’d become talking about weapons.

“Why can’t you crush on someone normal?” Mariah asks. “That new guy, Josh, is cute. And he was totally checking out your ass in the gym the other day.”

Clara rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to fuck Stark. Or Josh.”

“You into girls?” Mariah asks.

“Not really into anything,” Clara says.

“Fair enough,” Mariah says. “Someone come help me with this dress. It’s a rental and if I break the zipper, Coulson says I have to pay for it.”

Clara stops flinging chopsticks into the trash and goes to help her with the zipper. “It’s a nice dress.”

“If only I had a job that pays well enough for designer dresses,” Mariah sighs. “Or a rich boyfriend. Really, either works.”

“Maybe  _ you _ should date Stark,” Madison says.

“And end up with my face splashed across every tabloid in the country? I would never be able to do undercover work again. No, thank you.”

“You two are ridiculous,” Clara says. 

“We’re totally getting a tour of Fenway before we leave,” Mariah says.

“I thought you were a football person,” Clara says.

“I mean, Pats over Red Sox any day, but Foxboro’s out of our way.”

~*~

They get one better than a tour of Fenway. They get to go to a game.

Stark’s week at MIT goes off without a hitch, and Agent Coulson, who still dislikes the man, rewards them all with a baseball game.

“Maddie, you checked his vitals, right?” Mariah asks when Agent Coulson comes back from concessions with a hotdog for each of them. “Stark didn’t replace him with a robot or something?”

“Ha ha,” Agent Coulson says. He hands out the hotdogs. “It was a good mission. They happen so rarely I figured we’d celebrate.”

“Fine by me,” Mariah says. She’s got a Red Sox hat on her head, her hair in two neat braids underneath it. She’s looks as comfortable in ripped jeans and a t-shirt as she had in the beautiful dresses she wore all week. 

Clara’s never been to a baseball game before, and she looks confused when the crowd begins booing when the first batter steps up. “They don’t like him?” she asks.

Mariah’s mouth drops, hotdog forgotten.

“Even I know the Red Sox and Yankees hate each other,” Madison says.

“Is this your first baseball game?” Mariah asks.

“Yeah. So, big rivals?”

“Oh man,” Mariah says, “You have no idea.”

She launches into a detailed history of the rivalry between the two teams and at one point Clara catches Agent Coulson’s eyes, pleading for help, but he just smiles and turns his attention back to the game.

~*~

Clara’s fallen in love with her new arrows, the ones that inject the paralytic on contact, even if she doesn’t love all the places she can go now that she doesn’t have to be completely covered.

_ “Sand _ ,” she tells Agent Coulson. “I have sand places sand should never be.”

Agent Coulson winces. “That was more information than I needed.”

“Fucking deserts,” Clara says. Her hair is blonder, and her cheeks are speckled with freckles that she didn’t have before. At least she isn’t sunburned like Harris. The idiot forget to reapply his sunscreen on Day 1 and didn’t quit whining into the comms the rest of the mission. 

“Does that mean you’re ready to go somewhere colder?” Agent Coulson asks.

Clara stops trying to shake sand out of her hair and looks over at her handler. They never talk about new missions until after a full debrief including medical check, and he’s bringing up a new mission when they’ve just stepped on the quinjet?

“Sir?”

“Director Fury needs our best on this one,” Agent Coulson says. He hands her a folder. “Look it over. Give me an answer when we get back to base.”

“Yes, sir,” Clara says, but she doesn’t move until Agent Coulson moves back to his seat. 

Once his headphones are in and his eyes are closed, Clara opens the folder.

A picture of a pretty redhead looks back at her.

_ Natalia Romanova _ the files says, then a long, long list of known and possible aliases. 

It takes longer than Clara will ever admit for her to realize that she’s looking at the classified file on the Black Widow. Once she does, she had to close her eyes and take a deep breath.

No wonder Fury needs their best.

She’s just not quite sure she qualifies for that honor.

She spends the rest of the flight paging through the file and wondering what the hell Director Fury wants from her.

“Well?” Agent Coulson asks once Harris and the pilot are off the jet, leaving the two of them.

“You know my skill set,” Clara says, “but I thought the Black Widow is  _ the  _ shoot on sight target.”

“She is.”

Clara gives him a look. “Shoot to kill.”

“She is,” Agent Coulson says again.

Clara’s blood runs cold. “I really hope what you’re meaning to say is that, fully aware of what my file says, you’re sending me out to  _ retrieve _ the Black Widow.”

“I’m not,” Agent Coulson says. “Director Fury is requesting you for back-up knowing that you’ll do what’s necessary if it comes down to it.”

Clara feels sick. This is too close to premeditated assassination for her liking. Her list of kills is longer than just Trickshot now, but it’s all in-the-moment decisions. She doesn’t go into missions with a kill target in mind. She’s made it very clear that she’ll be SHIELD’s sharpshooter, but she won’t be their assassin. 

But, she’s been with SHIELD for four years and she just reached Level 3. She’s not naive, and she’s not stupid. Director Fury will push, because that’s his job, to push his assets to give them the most of themselves. It’s Clara’s job to push back, to make her stand and then hold it.

She also knows that sometimes things have to be done to keep the world safe.

She just wishes she didn’t have to do those things. It’s selfish, and it’s stupid because does it really matter who pulls the trigger if the person in the scope ends up dead? To her, it does. She knows a bunch of agents resent her for ‘refusing to get her hands dirty’ and ‘thinking she’s better than the rest of them’, and it’s probably be better for team dynamics if she just fell into line, but she can’t.

Agent Coulson promised her when she was young and scared and so, so out of her depth that she could draw her line in the sand, and she’s going to cling to that promise until she gets killed in the line of duty.

“Well,” she says, handing the folder over, “I would hate to disappoint Director Fury.”

“Agent Barton -” Agent Coulson’s eyes dip down to the folder, “The Black Widow is dangerous. This isn’t going to be like any mission you’ve been on before.”

“Ah,” Clara says with a smile, “Are you worried about me? That’s so sweet.”

Agent Coulson huffs out something that could just as easily be a sigh as a laugh. “Fury will be happy. I told him I’d take point if you agreed to go.”

“Who’s the primary sniper?” Clara asks.

“Woodcock.”

Clara shouldn’t be surprised, because this is  _ the _ mission of the decade, but she still whistles, because Woodcock is the best SHIELD has. Clara’s pretty sure she was brought in to be Woodcock’s replacement, but she doesn’t kill enough people to get that honor.

“Woodcock’s a legend,” Clara says.

“So’s the Black Widow.”

“We make it out of this, I’m eating nothing but pizza for a week,” Clara says.

~*~

There’s snow on the ground when they get to Moldova. 

For sneaky reasons, the team breaks up to go to two different bases.

“Security reasons,” Agent Coulson tells Clara with a sigh.

“Easy mistake,” Clara says. “Both start with S.”

Woodcock, a man with gunmetal gray eyes and scars that adorn his arms like tattoos, cracks a smile and says, “Glad I’m not with you two.”

“I get that a lot,” Agent Coulson says.

Clara pretends to be offended, but she’s glad when Woodcock and Sitwell go in one direction and she and Agent Coulson go in the other. Woodcock has a sniper’s stare, the kind that bores into you like he’s searching for the best place to shoot, and it makes her uncomfortable.

She hasn’t worked with him much, because missions rarely require two elite marksmen, but apparently Fury wanted all the stops pulled out on this one. The first time she met Woodcock, she hated him. She thought he was a threat to her position, and it took her a long time to realize that  _ she _ was the threat to  _ his _ position.

That changed pretty quickly, though, and sometime while in Bosnia she realized that she didn’t have to worry about threats to her position. If Fury would bankroll a sharpshooter who refused to kill then he would keep her through anything

Of course, the job she’s on now calls all that into question. Is this an ultimatum - kill Widow or you’re out? Is it an exception - kill this one and I’ll leave you be? Clara hasn’t given into an exception yet, she knows the organization she works for, and she knows what they’re up against. If she gives in once, it won’t be long before she gives in twice then a third time and she won’t fall down that hole.

“You’re quiet,” Agent Coulson says when he opens the door to the little apartment they’ll be staying in. 

It’s above a small bakery, and they share a thin wall with the owners of the bakery. Clara had a wedding ring on her finger, because the couple wouldn’t rent to an unmarried man and woman. Clara twists the ring and wonders if she’ll have to kiss Agent Coulson before this is all over. 

Better than having to kiss Sitwell.

“Thought you’d like the break,” she says.

“Last time you were this quiet you switched all the coffee in the cafeteria to decaf,” Agent Coulson says. 

She sits down on the bed they’ll be sharing, a bed barely big enough for two people to fit. They’re going to have to spoon, or at the very least, cuddle. Her personal space issues are going to love that.

“Just trying to figure out Fury’s angle,” Clara admits.

Agent Coulson’s the one who found her on streets of New York, the one who brought her into SHIELD and showed her that not everyone in the world wants to wring something out of you. He’s the one who coaxed her into going to therapy when she didn’t want to, who put up with her teenage mood swings, and who never judged her for being the person her life shaped her to be.

Somewhere along the line she stopped trusting him because he was the only option she had and started trusting him because he never let her down. She knew he was SHIELD first and her friend second, but the fact that she considers him a friend is a miracle in and of itself.

“This isn’t a test,” Agent Coulson says.

“Life is a test,” she responds. She rubs her head. Did Fury send her because he wants her to break her own rules and kill the Widow or because he wants her to follow her own rules and bring her in? 

“You’re back-up,” Agent Coulson reminds her. “If everything goes according to plan, we won’t need you.”

“We’re tracking the Black Widow,” Clara says. “Nothing is going to go to plan.”

~*~

They track Natalia Romanova through the streets of Ribnita for two entire weeks. Sitwell and Woodcock are convinced she’s running guns for someone.

Clara’s convinced they’re walking into a trap.

“It couldn’t be more obvious if there were flashing signs,” Clara says when she and Agent Coulson are in their room together. “We’re not good enough to stay unnoticed for two weeks. Not for the Black Widow.”

“Maybe she’s busy with her job,” Agent Coulson says. “We’re being quiet.”

Clara doesn’t have as much faith in their organization as Coulson, or maybe it’s her own ability to blend in that she doesn’t trust. Her hair is too dirty blond to look European, and she can’t get the midwest out of her posture or her accent no matter how hard she tries. 

The Black Widow is leading them on, leading them somewhere, and Clara doesn’t know what she’s going to do once she gets them there. It makes her antsy.

“You’re not that stupid,” Clara says.

“I’m aware this could be a trap,” Coulson says. He’s tired and it makes him look much older than she remembers him being. “But this is the first time we’ve glimpsed her in years. This could be our only chance to get her.”

“And if it’s her chance to get us?” Clara asks. She shakes her head. “Sorry. I need to take a walk. I’m no good right now.”

They’re not supposed to leave the apartment, but Clara has a blowgun with her, complete with darts coated in paralytic, and Coulson seems to know that she needs to get out because he just nods.

“No more than half an hour.”

She throws off a salute and gets out of their room, taking a moment to lean against the door as soon as she’s closed it behind her.

A soft cough to her left has her eyes flying open, and she falls into a defensive stance before she realizes it’s just Nastya, the wife of the baker.

“Early days?” Nastya asks, nodding towards the closed door.

Clara forces a smile. “You know.”

Nastya nods like she does in fact know. “It gets better.”

Clara smiles but that seems to be it for Nastya’s English because she just smiles one last time before going into her apartment.

Clara goes downstairs, because she needs to get outside and breathe some fresh air.

~*~

Ribnita is more modern than Clara expects it to be, even though they’ve been here for two weeks, even though she knows better than to assume Old Soviet means crumbling brick and sooty sidewalks. There are paved roads and bridges and skyscrapers and big glass office buildings, and it seems surreal to Clara that this is where they’re going to have their showdown with the Black Widow.

She always assumed it would be some rundown warehouse, the windows frosted over with grime, the wooden support beams rotting away. She assumed there would be explosions and dramatics, not a patient game of cat and mouse in a city with  _ strip malls _ .

Then again, nothing’s really gone the way she expected it to in life, so she doesn’t know why she’s surprised now.

They’re in the back of an auto dealership, Woodcock in the actual building, Clara on the roof guarding the exit they think the Widow will use. Coulson’s pretending to buy a car, Sitwell’s in one of the offices pretending that he belongs there.

Clara’s reminding herself to breathe, slow and steady.

The minutes draw out into hours, and Clara’s wondering if the Widow won’t show, wondering when the building is going to blow up, wondering when she’s going to hear a ‘copter coming and if she’ll be the first to die if it does.

Her death scenarios are broken up by the sounds of a scuffle on the comms. She hears Woodcock grunt, hears a dull thunk and then the weird crinkling that means someone’s touching an open comm with their bare hands.

“That wasn’t your best,” a clearly female voice says. “I expected your best.”

Clara feels a shiver go up her spine. Not many people have heard the Black Widow speak and lived to talk about it. Is the Widow going to go after Coulson? Sitwell? Clara should move, should jump down and intercept, but she can’t. This is her post. She -

What are her orders?

No - what is she willing to do?

Clara watches as the door she’s guarding opens and she tracks the target, surprised at her boldness, wondering what the trick is, when the woman opens a car door. 

She wants SHIELD’s best? 

Fine.

Clara will her give her the best.

She pulls back the string of her bow and her arrow hits the Widow’s hand, one of the few parts of her body that isn’t protected but won’t be a kill shot.

She looks down at her hand then up at Clara’s perch, but before she can do anything, she slumps to the ground. Clara puts her bow down and takes her quiver out.

“Status?” Clara asks.

“Woodcock out but not dead,” Sitwell says. “Eyes on target?”

Clara looks at the body on the ground, the spill of red hair against white snow.

“Pursuing target.”

“Agent Barton,” that’s Coulson.

Clara takes her comm out and puts it with her bow and quiver. She climbs down off the building, puts the Widow in the back of the car and rummages through her pockets until she finds keys. 

She drives back to the apartment above the bakery. SHIELD won’t think to look for her there, not right away anyways. She parks on the street, slings the Widow over her shoulder and goes slowly up the stairs. 

She’s at the top when Nastya comes out of her room, and her eyes narrow when she sees Clara with an obviously unconscious body.

Clara lets her body language settle into something dangerous, a touch unstable. “My husband was cheating on me.”

The answer to how much English does Nastya know is answered when Nastya disappears and comes back with a hunting knife. She hands it over and kisses Clara’s cheek before going back to her apartment.

Clara shrugs and brings the Widow into the apartment. 

Really, it’s just one big room with a bed, a stove, and a table, and then a smaller bathroom, but it’s been home for the past two weeks, and it’ll work for what Clara has planned. 

She drops the Widow on the bed and goes about securing her wrists and ankles to the bedposts. She has to use Coulson’s ties to do it. If she makes it out of this alive then this is going to be one hell of a story. Once she has the Widow tied down, she pulls a chair up to the bed, takes out her blowgun and waits.

It doesn’t take long for the Widow to stir. Either she has a built up immunity to Clara’s particular paralytic or there’s something superhuman about her. Clara could easily believe either.

“I’m not dead,” the Widow says, and Clara thinks she looks disappointed by that.

“Were you expecting to be?” Clara asks.

The Widow’s eyes snap over to Clara’s even as she tests her bindings. Her lips quirk in a small smile. “They did send you.”

“Backup,” Clara says. 

“You’re better than that,” the Widow says.

“Is that why you were hoping for me?” Clara asks. 

“You have a reputation.”

“So do you.”

They regard each other for a long moment. 

Clara breaks first. She’s the one with the questions, after all. “Why’d you want to die?” Clara asks.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Clara rolls her eyes. “You’re too good to be caught. You wanted us to find you. No,” Clara says, because that doesn’t sound right, “You wanted  _ me _ to find you.”

The Widow shrugs the best she can with her arms secured above her head. “You have a reputation.”

“What about it interested you?”

“You never miss,” the Widow says, her eyes boring into Clara’s. “Clean kills, quick deaths.”

“So you did come to die.”

“Death comes for everyone. I wanted a better one than I deserve.”

“Woodcock would’ve killed you,” Clara says. “Why’d you take him out?”

“I’ve killed his friends. He knows how to make a kill shot hurt.”

Clara considers that this could be some sort of elaborate trap, but she can’t imagine what it could be for. The Widow could’ve easily taken the four of them out at the car dealership. She didn’t. She really did come to die. 

Clara can’t help but laugh, and she only laughs harder when the Widow looks put out. A genuine pout, not a sexy one, looks out of place on her face.

“I guess you missed the second part of my reputation,” Clara says, “I don’t kill people.”

“You do when it’s necessary,” the Widow says, like she actually researched SHIELD’s top assassins to decide which one she wanted to kill her.

“If you had killed Woodcock then maybe the arrow would’ve gone somewhere lethal,” Clara says. “Then again, maybe not. I should take a look at your hand.”

It’s slowly trickling blood down the Widow’s arm. Clara stands up but the look the Widow gives her makes Clara sit back down. 

“Or not,” Clara says. “Wanna talk about why the elaborate suicide plan?”

“I’m tired of running,” the Widow says, “and eventually those I’m running from will catch me. I don’t want to be caught. What are you planning to do with me if you’re not going to kill me?”

“I’m going to give you a choice,” Clara says. “When my handler realizes where I’ve taken you, he’s going to come here. You can ask him to join SHIELD or you can ask him to put a bullet in your head. He’ll make it quick.”

“You truly won’t kill me,” the Black Widow says, a touch of awe in her voice. “Why not?”

“I don’t want to,” Clara says. “And I don’t think you want me to kill you, either.”

Because she’s watching so close, Clara can see the way the other woman draws into herself.

“You’re brilliant,” Clara says, “and you don’t do anything half-ass. You know exactly who I am and what I’m willing and not willing to do. You knew that when you made sure I was the one who brought you down. I think you don’t want to die.”

“And if I do?”

Clara shrugs. “I believe in choice. It’s your choice if you want to die. But it’s my choice whether or not I’m the not who kills you, and I’ve chosen not to.”

The Widow stares at her, processing this.

“If you’re tired of running, I’m sure SHIELD would like to help you take out the people chasing you,” Clara says. She looks down at the blowgun in her hands. “SHIELD gave me a choice when I was younger. Come in and work for them or try to survive on my own. I knew the odds of my surviving on my own weren’t good.”

“Not a true choice,” the Widow says.

“But still a choice,” Clara says. “Still one that  _ I  _ made, not anyone else. It’s turned out to be a good one for me.”

“Why?” the Widow asks.

Clara smiles, remembering the way she’d endlessly peppered Coulson with questions in that tiny diner. “Because I like helping people.”

There’s a commotion outside the door, and Clara supposes that means their time is up.

“Give me a moment,” she tells the Widow.

She has her blowgun in one hand, a knife in the other, and when she opens the door to the apartment, Coulson’s back is pressed flat against the wall as Nastya menaces him with a cast iron frying pan.

“Thank you,” Clara says, slipping the blowgun into her pocket. The knife she presses to the crotch of Coulson’s pants, and he goes absolutely still. 

Nastya bares her teeth and shakes the pan twice more before going back into her apartment. Clara waits until the door has slammed shut to pull the knife back.

“She thinks you’re cheating on me with the Black Widow,” Clara explains, leading Coulson into the room.

She isn’t surprised to see that the Widow’s managed to get out of the ties that were holding her down. Clara is surprised to see her sitting cross-legged on the bed. She half-expected her to be gone by now. Or brandishing some sort of weapon.

“You’d better have a really good explanation,” is all Coulson has to say.

“I was carrying an unconscious body up the stairs, and I got caught. I needed a good reason, and no one will deny that the Widow’s much prettier than me so,” Clara shrugs. “It worked.”

Coulson looks like he’s getting a headache. “I meant for why she’s here in the first place. You left your bow behind. You left your comm behind. I thought you were dead.”

“I think Fury was testing me,” Clara says. “Still not sure whether or not I passed. Oh, Widow, this is Agent Coulson. You still want someone to shoot you?”

She scowls, the first real emotion Clara’s seen, and then studies Coulson, like she’s assessing his worth as her executioner.

After a moment she says, “SHIELD would help me destroy the rest of the Red Room?”

Clara looks over at Coulson. “I tried the recruitment speech. I don’t think it was as good as yours.”

It’s Coulson’s turn to study the Widow, like he’s not sure she’s serious. “You want to join SHIELD?”

“I want to stop running,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop being chased.”

Clara looks between them, hopeful.

“You’re going to be on probation for quite some time,” Coulson tells the Widow, “and Woodcock’s never going to like you.”

“You’ll help me track down my remaining leads?”

“As long as the Director approves it.”

The Widow grins and gets to her feet to offer Coulson her hand. “Natasha Romanov.”

“Welcome to SHIELD, Ms. Romanov.”


	3. Chapter 3

Clara hasn’t been stared at so much at SHIELD since she first got here and a 17 year old being dragged in by  _ the _ Agent Coulson was big news. The Black Widow is even bigger news.

Clara finds herself hunching her shoulders when they go to the cafeteria after Natasha’s entry meeting with the DIrector. Clara’s own meeting, a debrief or possibly a demotion, is tomorrow. She gets herself a well-balanced meal and then uses her body to protect it in a way she hasn’t done in years. That she hasn’t done since it finally got through her head that the food wouldn’t run out here and that Coulson wouldn’t ever take it away as a punishment.

He’d restrict her range time and sometimes he’d confine her to quarters, but he never told her she couldn’t eat. Never tried to take away dessert or put her on a bread and water diet either. The range was a privilege; food, her bed, those were things she got no matter what.

Natasha is protective of her tray in her own way, body language open, daring someone to come and try to take even a single crouton off her salad. Clara doesn’t doubt that she could do serious damage with the blunt cafeteria knife she idly twirls in her fingers.

“Surprised they didn’t give me plastic,” Natasha says.

She takes a delicate bite of her salad, and Clara struggles to reconcile the almost dainty way she holds her fork with the bruises Woodcock has from his run-in with the Widow.

“SHIELD takes its carbon footprint seriously,” Clara says, “and I’m sure they know a weapon is a weapon for you, plastic or metal, doesn’t matter.”

“Most people like to lie to themselves if it comforts them,” Natasha says.

Clara laughs. “You just met Fury. He seem like a man who lies to anyone for comfort? Least of all himself?”

The corner of Natasha’s mouth quirks up. “No.”

Clara goes back to eating, putting her pizza crusts in a neat pile to eat when everything else is done. She used to eat them right away, afraid someone would snatch them, but she doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.

Except -

She pulls her tray closer to her and glares at Natasha’s encroaching hand.

“Mine,” she says, for good measure.

Two elegant eyebrows go up. “There’s some fight in you after all.”

“There’s plenty of fight in me,” Clara says. “I just don’t think fights have to end in someone dead.”

“Then your fights will never end.”

“I guess it’s a good thing then that I’ve got more than ‘some’ fight in me.”

Natasha offers her what Clara thinks is the first genuine smile she’s gotten from the woman.

~*~

It takes more of Clara’s self-control than she’d like to admit to leave her bow behind when she goes to meet with Fury. The only reason she’s able to stand in front of him without fidgeting is because she has her boot knife to comfort her.

Fury smiles at her like he knows she’s nervous and doesn’t intend to put her at ease.

“So,” he says, leaning back in his seat. “The Black Widow.”

Clara’s sitting so straight in her chair her back’s starting to hurt, not used to proper posture. “I’ve been a SHIELD agent for four years, and you’ve known me for five. You knew what you were getting when you sent me as back-up.”

“Agent Barton, I have cultivated a very particular reputation here, one that I don’t want to ruin, but never did I think you were going to bring the Black Widow into our fold. Now we have to figure out what we’re going to do with her. She’s dangerous and she’s unpredictable.”

“Train her,” Clara says. “Give her a choice.”

“Her choice is very simple,” Fury says, “She works with us or she dies. That was the choice you gave her, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“She’s not you,” Fury says, “The psychologists wanted me to make that clear to you, because for some reason they don’t think you take them seriously.”

Clara keeps her face blank, unwilling to give him anything until she figures out what it is he’s looking for.

“You were a damaged kid with a hell of a lot of potential when Coulson found you. The Red Room shaped her. You’re not going to be able to unshape her.”

“I don’t want to unshape her,” Clara says. “That would make me no better than the Red Room. And I know that the Red Room made her. She didn’t have a choice in who she got to be. Not then. I just want her to have that choice now.”

Fury stares her down with his one good eye, like he’s trying to see if she has any ulterior motives. Clara finds herself abruptly glad she’s never been interrogated by the man. She hopes she never is.

“If she makes the wrong choice, someone in the agency is going to put her down.”

Clara nods. She knows the kind of organization she works for. Fury is willing to give leeway until it’s dangerous, and the Black Widow is certainly dangerous. Clara has higher hopes for Natasha. 

“Alright,” Fury says. “Get out of here. And don’t use this as an excuse to skip seeing Dr. Suresh. He says he misses you.”

“Then he’s lying, sir,” Clara says.

Fury laughs. “No shit, Barton.”

~*~

Watching Natasha get settled into SHIELD is weird. Clara’s been around junior agents and even trainees before, but standing there when Coulson explains to her how the IDs works and promises not to use his access to her room unless it’s an emergency, standing guard outside medical while Natasha gets her physical, going to HR to get her ID made, it reminds Clara of when she first came to SHIELD.

Only, Natasha isn’t as scared as Clara was. She has a whole set of skills she can fall back on if she needs them. When Coulson promises not to go in her room, Natasha shrugs and says it’s his death wish if he enters without permission. When Clara goes with her to medical, Natasha smiles like she thinks Clara’s cute. Useless, but cute. 

So yeah, it’s abundantly clear that she and Natasha aren’t the same, not even all that similar, but it doesn’t stop her from trying to look out for Natasha the way Coulson looked out for Clara when she first came to SHIELD.

The first time she and Natasha spar, Natasha completely wipes the floor with her.

“You going to teach me any of that fancy stuff?” Clara asks, getting to her feet, “Or just stand there and smirk?”

“I can do both,” Natasha says and Clara laughs, surprised.

~*~

Two weeks after Natasha comes to SHIELD, Clara gets sent on her next mission.

Without Coulson.

“We figured if you weren’t keeping an eye on the Widow then he should,” Sitwell explains outside the briefing room. 

“I like working with you,” Clara says before leading him into the room.

“Jungle mission,” Sitwell says, addressing Clara and the other agents as he comes in. “Congrats, you’re all going to the Amazon.”

“That’s the place with the piranhas, right?” Clara asks.

“Yes, but no, you can’t bring Coulson one back as an early birthday present.”

“You ruin all my fun,” Clara tells him.

“Anyways,” Sitwell says, “We’ve gotten reports of strange animal sightings from the villagers in some of the more remote areas of the rainforest.”

“Stranger than giant fucking snakes and flesh-eating fish?” Burns asks.

“We think someone decided to take the already terrifying wildlife found in the Amazon and give them some enhancements. We’re sending a specialized team to verify if this is true and then deal with whoever was stupid enough to experiment on animals in the Amazon.”

“If there’s a sharktopus or a dinocroc, I am out,” Burns says. “Just so we’re all clear.”

Sitwell looks from Burns to Clara and shakes his head. “I must have really screwed up recently to get the two of you on my mission. Phelps, you’re officially my favorite agent on this mission.”

“I thought handlers only had unofficial favorites,” Clara says.

Sitwell tosses them each a thick packet on the flora and fauna of the rainforest. “Read up. We leave tomorrow, and you need to get an idea of what’s normal there so we can pick out what’s abnormal.”

“Do I get to fly?” Clara asks. She got her piloting license as soon as she was a Level 2 and allowed to take the class.

“You do,” Sitwell says. “Which means you actually need to do your reading tonight, because you won’t have the flight to do it.” 

He looks pointedly at Burns, who just shrugs.

“Alright,” Sitwell says. “Dismissed.”

Clara takes her packet to Coulson’s office. Even though she’s long since gotten her GED and doesn’t spend her afternoons studying there, it’s where she takes all her mission briefs. Coulson’s office is one of the few places where her mind quiets down enough to read, like stepping through the doors is a signal to her brain that it’s time to focus.

It doesn’t surprise her to see Coulson behind his desk. It surprises her a little to see Natasha at the desk Clara used to sit at when she was studying for her GED.

“I’m reading about the history of SHIELD,” Natasha says. 

“Yay Stark, boo Nazis,” Clara says. She flops down on the couch, stomach first, stretching out. “There, just saved you a shit ton of reading.”

“What are you reading?” Natasha asks.

“Amazon wildlife. I fly out tomorrow.”

Natasha goes back to her reading, no outward signs that she’s disappointed that Clara’s leaving. Clara tells herself that’s a good thing. Clara can’t stay grounded until Natasha’s mission ready, and it’s not like they’ll only go on missions together once Natasha is an agent. 

Clara flips to the first page in her packet and starts reading.

Ten minutes later she says, “Woah, pepto bismol dolphins.”

Apparently there are things called river dolphins and when they become adults they turn pink. They also have teeth, because of course they do. And they eat piranhas. What the hell, Clara thinks. She does not want to go to the Amazon.

“Green anacondas are my favorite,” Natasha says. “Females grow to be much larger than the males.”

“Ugh, snakes,” Clara says. 

“You’re afraid of snakes?”

“Not too thrilled about giant ones that enjoy crushing people to death,” Clara says. “I’d say I have a healthy appreciation of their threat level.”

“I’m trying to work,” Coulson says.

“I bet you’re a jaguar person,” Clara says. “I wanted to bring you a piranha back, but Sitwell said no. So when you get another boring tie for your birthday, it’s his fault.”

“I like the tie you got for me my last birthday,” Coulson says.

Clara grins because that had been a good find. It’s not every day you find a tie patterned with FBI-style sunglasses. She’s never seen Coulson wear it, but she likes to imagine that he has it hanging up somewhere in his house as some kind of weird modern art. 

Speaking of art, “Why do you still have that up?” Clara asks, nodding towards the framed placemat next to his desk.

The placemat that she drew on the first time they met and she was refusing to talk to him in the diner. It’s a very poorly drawn, stick figure filled mess. She scrawled her signature in big loopy letters in the corner.

“In case you ever get famous,” he says. “I could sell it for millions.”

“I am famous,” she says. 

“You’re something,” he says, but he sounds fond. “Don’t worry, I tell all the new agents that my niece drew it for me.”

She laughs because he is such an asshole sometimes. She never would’ve guessed it in the beginning, that mild, suit wearing Agent Coulson had it in him, but his greatest strength is making people underestimate him. In some ways, she thinks he might be as good an actor as Natasha is. 

“You leave tomorrow morning?” Coulson asks.

“Yeah. Sitwell says I can pilot. What’re the odds that whatever weird things the locals think they’re seeing are as real as the giant anaconda?”

Coulson gives her a look.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “That’s what I thought. Wanna make bets on whether I get killed by a natural animal or modified one?”

“You’re not dying,” Coulson says. “I’m not letting Sitwell take you on a mission where we’re going to lose you.”

“Why are you letting Sitwell take me on this mission at all?” she asks. 

“You’re the best shot we have,” Coulson says, “and you only object to killing humans.”

Which means this mission is going to be a complete shitshow. 

~*~

It’s a shitshow.

First of all, the rainforest is  _ huge _ , and because of the nature of the thing, the quinjet doesn’t get them very close to where they’re trying to go. They land in Marabá, and then rent a car and head down 155 for 5 hours until they reach Xinguara. From there they travel west until they reach São Félix do Xingu. 

It’s dark when they arrive, and everyone’s tired of being crammed into a vehicle that isn’t made for four adults and all their gear.

“We stay here tonight,” Sitwell says. “In the morning we’ll meet with our guides. A member of the Kamaiurá tribe is going to lead us into the rainforest and to Lake Ipavu. Several tribes rely on the lake and surrounding rivers to survive, and whatever experiments are being conducted are making their lives difficult. Barton, don’t start any fights.”

“Oh, sure, call me out,” Clara says. “I’m sure I don’t speak their language.”

“No, but only their boys are trained to hunt with a bow and arrow. Don’t try to start a revolution or anything.”

“Never, sir.”

Burns snorts and Sitwell sighs.

“Phelps?”

“Yes, sir,” Phelps says.

“You’re still my favorite.”

Clara and Burns go to bunk down, still smiling.

They spend two days going down the Xingu River in what Clara thinks is a dubiously sound boat, but that their guide and by extension, Sitwell, trust implicitly. After that, they strap all their gear onto their backs and hike out towards Lake Ipavu. 

They make their camp a couple thousand meters from the lake, because Sitwell wants them to disturb the indigenous people as little as possible.

“Following the prime directive, sir?” Clara asks, teasing as they put up tents.

“Something like that,” Sitwell says.

Later, they all sit around a single lantern eating their MREs.

“You’re the only person I know who actually likes these things,” Burns says, as Clara makes quick work of her beef ravioli.

Clara looks around. Sitwell’s soldiering through his, but Phelps makes a face every time she takes a bite.

Clara shrugs. “Better than being hungry.”

“Barton has the palate of a teenage boy,” Sitwell says. “Don’t trust her taste in anything.”

“Too bad there aren’t pizza MREs,” Clara says. “I would spend a month in this place if I had a whole supply of those.”

“I hope we don’t spend a month here,” Burns says. 

They finish up dinner and get settled into their camp. Clara sleeps with her bow, and she knows Burns is sleeping with her gun. Out here, it isn’t just the enemy interested in killing them.

The next morning, after a quick meeting and even quicker breakfast, Clara packs a day pack, puts a comm in, and scrambles up a tree to start scouting. Fifteen minutes later she can’t see the camp anymore and feels a little like a monkey, leaping from tree to tree.

“I actually kind of like this place,” she says.

“There was a spider in my boot this morning,” Burns says. “I would’ve screamed if it wouldn’t have brought the entire rainforest down on us.”

“That’s one way to draw the enemy out,” Clara says.

“Quiet on the comms,” Sitwell says.

“Is that an automatic handler response or do you actually want us quiet?” Clara asks. “Ooh, a monkey. It’s kind of cute.”

“It can probably kill you,” Burns says.

Clara carefully skirts around the monkey as she makes her way to the next tree. The trees thin out the closer she gets to the lake, but that’s also where the villages are so she doesn’t get too close. Instead, she makes her way back closer to the Xingu River, following one of the smaller rivers that feeds the lake. 

She estimates that it’s near noon when she finds something interesting. It’s a modern compound, not even trying to blend in. As if whoever’s here assumes no one would bother come looking for them here, so why bother. 

From the pictures Clara’s seen, the Kamauirá don’t have this kind of technology.

“Hawkeye to base,” she says.

“Base here,” Sitwell replies.

“Found something that doesn’t belong. Can you read my coordinates?”

“Affirmative. Describe what you see.”

“Solid structure not in the style of any of the indigenous people. Too far from the Xingu to be spotted from the river, but close enough for easy access. On the bank of one of the feed rivers. Entirely possible that an experiment could escape and swim into the lake.”

“Any sign of these experiments?”

“Negative, sir. No sign of people either.”

“What kind of provisions did you bring with you?” Sitwell asks.

“Can hold this position for four days without resupply.”

“I want your eyes on this. Report when you see something. And stay safe, Hawkeye.”

“Yes, sir.”

She turns her comm off and starts searching for a good vantage point that will also provide cover. She’s pretty sure she’s going to have to sleep lashed to a tree branch. Even pizza wouldn’t make this worth it.

She scowls at one of the monkeys she’s sharing the tree with.

“What’re you looking at?” she hisses.

It blinks at her before going to find another tree.

~*~

She doesn’t dare talk this close to the enemy camp without a good reason, which means it’s a long afternoon spent in the tree. It’s an even longer next day. She’s almost tempted to get down from her perch and poke around, see if the structure has been abandoned, but she’s been too well-trained for that. 

She holds her position and waits for something to happen.

And waits.

And then waits some more. 

She hopes Natasha’s having more fun at SHIELD than she’s having here.

Finally, there’s movement. The door to the structure opens and a man in a dirty lab coat strides out, an honest to God clipboard in his hands.

Clara takes out her binoculars, because the man is walking away from the structure, and she doesn’t want to risk following him and making too much noise. Fortunately, he doesn’t go far, just up the river where he has some sort of pen set up.

Aw, shit, she realizes, watching him inject some kind of serum into a trapped river dolphin.

She taps her comm on. “One hostile spotted. Appears to be running some sort of experiment on the river dolphins.”

“Any sign of what kind of experiment?” Burns asks.

“Injected it with something. I don’t know what. So far no reaction.”

“What is the status of the hostile?”

Clara watches him move upstream again. “Continuing to move away from the structure. There might be more animals trapped. Orders?”

There’s a moment of quiet before she hears some rustling and then Sitwell’s sleep-heavy voice say, “Estimated number of hostiles?”

“I’ve only seen one so far. Structure could support more but no confirmation.”

“Hostile engaged in activity?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to investigate. Leave no trace and get the hell out of there at first sign of danger.”

“Can do,” Clara says.

She checks to make sure the scientist is still moving away before she goes down to the structure. There’s no passcode to enter, not even a lock on the door. Maybe these missions in the middle of nowhere aren’t so bad if they lull the bad guys into thinking they don’t need security. 

The door opens into a large room with a computer, several paper files, and what looks like some kind of distillery. It’s probably how he’s making whatever it is that he’s making. In the far corner of the room is a bed. The rest of the walls are taken up with shelves filled with books, weird things suspended in jelly, and what she assumes are ingredients. 

There’s only one other door, and opening it starts off a bunch of shrieking and she quickly closes the door. That’s a room full of monkeys in cages. Which means the dolphins are a new test subject. 

“Definitely getting a mad scientist vibe,” she says into her comm. “There’s a room with test subjects, but they’re loud, and I don’t know what he’s tested on them. Proceed?”

“Negative, Hawkeye. Get whatever information you can on what he’s doing and bring it back here for Phelps to look over.”

“Copy that, sir.”

She takes out her phone and gives herself seven minutes to take pictures of as many things as she can before slipping out of the structure. 

The scientist is whistling, the sound reaching her in time for her to slip around the side of the structure. She isn’t spotted, and a moment later she hears the door open and he goes in. She goes back up in her tree, retrieves her bow, and makes her way back to camp.

When she gets there, she drops her phone in Phelps’s lap. “It looks like gibberish to me. Well, except for the map. That one I got.”

“Map?” Sitwell asks, as Phelps begins opening the pictures to study.

“Marking what animals he’s got caught where. There are notes about what he’s injecting them with, but that part means nothing to me. But from what I can tell, he’s got three dolphins, ten piranhas, fifteen snakes, and a shit ton of monkeys.”

“And he’s injecting them with something?” Sitwell asks. “Trackers? Maybe he’s worried about the extinction of rainforest species.”

Clara laughs. “Yeah.”

“Is he trying to control them?” Burns asks. “I mean, an army of piranhas and jaguars isn’t too shabby.”

“He doesn't have any jaguars,” Clara says. “Which does seem kind of strange.”

“They’re not useful,” Phelps says.

All three of them turn to her.

“I only skimmed the documents, but this guy - he’s a geneticist.” She looks at them like this is Big News, and when they don’t react she elaborates. “From the looks of it, he specializes in cross-species genetics.”

“Oh, hell,” Clara says.

“Can you tell what he’s trying to make?” Sitwell asks.

“I can try, but I don’t know how successful I’ll be.”

“Keep working,” Sitwell says. He motions Clara and Burns closer to him. “Clearly, he’s not doing anything sanctioned by anyone good if he’s working out here. Did you see signs of a partner?”

“Looked to be solo. Only one bed.”

“Then we’re going to go in. We need to put down anything he experimented on whether they’re on the endangered species list or not. If possible, I want him and all his research coming back with us. Barton, you and Burns are going to be on animal control. Phelps, you’re going to be in charge of research because you know what you’re looking for, and I’ll handle the hostile. Any questions?”

“We leave tomorrow?” Clara asks.

“As soon as it’s light enough to travel, so sleep early and sleep well. We don’t want to give this guy any more time to run his experiments. Phelps, I want you up a little later to see if you can find anything in those notes to tell us what we’re up against.”

“Hopefully he’s a bad scientist and whatever he was trying to do didn’t work,” Burns says.

“I’m not going to waste my night praying,” Clara says. She rummages through their supplies. “Any requests for dinner?”

“I just want a beer,” Burns says.

“Can’t help you there,” Clara says.

“I’ll buy you one when we get home,” Sitwell promises. He slaps at something on his arm.

“Hope that wasn’t endangered,” Clara says.

Sitwell flips her off.

~*~

They gather the supplies they’ll need and head out early the next morning. Clara goes up in the trees while the others take the ground. She goes out ahead of them, to scout the structure and its surroundings before they reach it.

When she gets to yesterday’s perch, she sees something that makes her very, very nervous. 

“This is Hawkeye, checking in,” she says. 

“Hawkeye, we read you,” Sitwell says, “What do you see?”

“Bright colors,” she says, “Brighter the color, the more poisonous the frog?”

“Yes,” Sitwell says. “Why?”

Clara looks at the river pen where yesterday’s pepto bismol pink dolphin is now highlighter pink. “I think I know what the dolphins were crossed with.”

“Shit,” Sitwell says.

Clara thinks it’s entirely unfair that a dolphin should be able to have sharp teeth  _ and  _ poisonous skin. This is probably why nature didn’t make them that way.

“They get their poisonous nature from their diet,” Phelps says. “I’m not sure it’s actually poisonous.”

“I’m not going to test that out,” Clara says. “But be advised that we have potentially poisonous dolphins. I don’t know what else he’s mixing, but there’s a roomful of monkeys in the structure. If they’re poisonous, we don’t want them getting loose. I can blow the whole thing.”

“The rainforest has enough problems without us setting it on fire,” Sitwell says. “Explosives are a last resort.”

“Copy that.”

Clara settles back into her perch to watch. The dolphins shouldn’t be a problem as long as they can’t survive out of the water. If they start jumping like frogs, she doesn’t care about preservation of habitats, she’ll set the entire fucking forest on fire. 

“Hostile on the move,” she whispers, as the scientist leaves his compound. “Does not appear to be armed.”

“Moving in on target,” Sitwell says. “Phelps is going to enter the structure. Burns and I will approach the hostile. Keep us apprised of what you see up there.”

“Will do.”

She gets herself into a comfortable position, one she won’t fall out of if things get ugly, and pulls her first arrow. Because things are going to get ugly, and she wants to make sure she’s ready for when they do.

Phelps slips into the structure unnoticed, and Clara’s wondering if this guy is flying solo. Most organizations will at least have alarms if not living, breathing security. Which begs the question, why has this guy set himself up in a private lab in the Amazon?

“In the structure,” Phelps says. “Gathering information.”

“We’ll wait to engage hostile until we have to,” Sitwell says. “Keep us updated.”

“Hostile is approaching second experiment,” Clara says. “Hostile is wearing gloves. I say that means they’re poisonous. Hostile preparing injection. Sir, I’m not sure we want him using it.”

“Agreed,” Sitwell says. “Phelps, prepare for trouble. Hawkeye, take your shot.”

Clara nocks an arrow and waits until she gets a clear view of the hostile. He’s getting ready to inject the dolphin, and Clara buries an arrow in his shoulder. He’s going to need a hell of a physical therapy routine if he wants to use it again.

He whirls around, looking for Clara, but he won’t find her. He does, however, pull someone out of his pocket. It’s some sort of trigger which means -

“On your guard,” Clara says. “He just pressed a button and that never ends well.”

The door to the structure swings open.

“That wasn’t me,” Phelps says.

“Find cover,” Sitwell orders her. “Hawkeye, get your eye on that door.”

“Yes, sir,” Clara says. They’re on the same page. She’s about to be fighting an army of monkeys. They’d better not fly.

“I’ll secure the hostile then assist.”

Clara has her first arrow ready to go and keeps her eyes on the door. She puts an arrow through the first monkey that bursts out and her second arrow goes through the next two. She gets the fourth one, too, but the fifth gets free. 

“They’re coming too quick,” she says. “Be aware of monkey hostiles.”

Later, when they’re out of this, she’s going to get so much shit for those words coming out of her mouth. But she can’t think about later. She just keeps pulling arrows and keeps firing and hopes Phelps is okay. Phelps in the structure means Clara can’t blow the thing even if she wants to.

She hears gunshots - Burns most likely - but tunes them out. Draw and fire. Draw and fire. 

Were there really this many monkeys in that room?

Draw and fire.

Was that a natural monkey?

Draw and fire.

Everything’s manageable if not good when one of the monkeys screeches and leaps up at her perch. She can see too-sharp teeth, and she doesn’t know much about monkeys, but she’s pretty sure -

“Piranhas,” she says, dodging the monkey’s bite and stabbing it with an arrow before kicking it off her tree. “Monkeys were crossed with piranhas.”

Another monkey comes at her, and she whacks it with her bow, twisting out of the way of its teeth. Unfortunately, the movement knocks her off balance and when she grabs for a branch to keep her from falling, the monkey lunges and sinks its teeth into her hand.

“Fuck,” she says and then she’s falling out of the tree, monkey clinging to the webbing between her thumb and forefinger.

Her back slams into the ground, knocking the breath out of her but not the monkey. 

A gunshot and the the monkey goes limp. 

Clara eases its teeth out of her hand and gets back to the fight. 

When it’s all over, Clara’s covered in bites, and there are monkey carcasses scattered on the rainforest floor. Phelps emerges from the structure, eyes wide, but unharmed. 

“I hid under the bed,” she says.

“Good,” Clara says, and means it. She looks around and sees Sitwell returning to where he left the unconscious scientist. 

“Let’s get this cleaned up and get home,” he says. “Barton, patch yourself up. Join us when you’re ready.”

Clara looks down at her hand. It’s the worst of her bites and it hurts now that she’s got nothing else to focus on. She kicks one of the dead monkeys and goes to retrieve her pack so she can get to her first aid supplies.

~*~

She’s sent straight to medical when they get back from the mission, and she hisses out a breath as they check her wounds. The one on her hand, at least, has gotten infected.

“You should’ve been more careful with this,” the intern says as he changes the bandage.

Clara bares her teeth, and who knows what she would’ve said if Coulson and Natasha hadn’t chosen that moment to come in.

“Poisonous dolphins,” Clara says, “and piranha-toothed monkeys. Coulson, I’m putting in a formal request to only work with you for the rest of my career.”

“I’m flattered,” Coulson says, smiling, “You might hurt Sitwell’s feelings though.”

Clara looks down at the yellow-crusted bitemark on her hand. “Don’t really care right now. I hate science.”

“The hostile you recovered was a former employee of Oscorp,” Coulson says. “They specialize in cross-species genetics, but they’re looking into limb regrowth and things with positive medical results.”

“So, he was a former employee because he didn’t play by the rules?”

“And he went somewhere there were no rules,” Coulson says.

“Did they send you to interview him?” Clara asks. “Two minutes of listening to you read SHIELD regulations, and I bet he’d crack.”

Coulson laughs. “Glad we got you back, Agent Barton. Trainee Romanov brought you a present.”

It’s a sign of how distracted she was that she didn’t realize that Natasha was holding something behind her back. That she was holding  _ a box of pizza _ behind her back.

“You are my favorite person on this planet right now,” Clara says. She holds her hands out. “Please, if I’m going to be stuck here, I need food. Did you know there’s no such thing as pizza MREs? Coulson, you need to get on that. It’s a national travesty.”

“I’ll put it on my to do list,” Coulson says.

“Good.” Clara eagerly takes the box when Natasha hands it over, and after she opens it she just inhales. It smells like heaven. Speaking of smelling, “I notice you waited until I got hosed down to come visit.”

“I have a sensitive nose,” Coulson says, just to make her smile.

She does. And, because she’s feeling pretty good about life right now, she turns the pizza box towards them. “If you’re going to stay, you can have a slice.”

“Only if we stay?” Coulson asks.

“Only one slice?” Natasha asks.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Clara sighs but she doesn’t stop smiling.


	4. Chapter 4

Natasha’s bumped from probationary trainee to probationary junior agent much faster than Clara was, but then again, Natasha didn’t join as a minor with no combat experience whatsoever. Clara also thinks it has something to do with the fact that Fury wants Natasha off base before she terrorizes SHIELD’s entire staff and they quit.

Anyways, it means Clara only goes on two missions without Natasha before she and Natasha get assigned their first mission together.

They go to Belarus, south, near the Ukrainian border, and Clara learns that there’s a Dublin in Belarus, not just Ireland.

“Everyone just reuses the same names,” Clara says. “Where’s the imagination in the world?”

She complains because she wants to talk, and complaining is the easiest thing to do. It’s mostly griping about how things are named, which segues into how things are named in America, and completely ignores her biggest problem with Belarus.

It’s cold.

Clara’s never liked the cold, not when she was a kid huddled with Barney sharing a bed because it was too cold not to, not when she was in the circus and there weren’t enough blankets to go around. The worst, though, was the cold in New York that one winter she spent on the streets. 

The snow on the ground in the streets, the small room they’re renting from a local farmer, it doesn’t take much to send her back to the streets of New York; cold, afraid, alone.

She pushes the chill out of her mind. She has a job to do.

She misses her old uniform, the one that should’ve been too stuffy and hot, the one that protected her from knocking herself out with her own arrows. Her new suit gives her much better range of motion but it also exposes her more.

She sits on the lumpy mattress, the only furniture in their room, and puts her head in her hands. She needs to pull herself together. She and Natasha are here to track down part of the Red Room. Once they get the information they can destroy it, and then they can leave.

They’re right near the Polesie State Radioecological Reserve (Natasha just calls it zapovednik which is much less of a mouthful). Basically, it’s the part of Belarus that got most screwed over by Chernobyl. Coulson is across the border in Ukraine, investigating the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. 

Natasha knows that the Red Room was messing around with radioactive material, but her memory’s fuzzy on whether their base was in Belarus or Ukraine. Hence splitting up.

Clara doesn’t like splitting up, but she knows Coulson can hold his own, and Natasha’s more than competent. They’re going to be fine.

They are.

She stops wallowing on the bed and goes downstairs. Natasha is talking to the farmer and his wife in rapid Russian that Clara has no hope of following. Apparently Belarusian is a thing, but Clara doesn’t know if everyone also speaks Russian or if they’re close enough to muddle through or what. She stands next to Natasha and tries not to fidget.

Natasha is cool and confident, and her accent is flawless. No one would look at her and think ‘outsider’. Unlike Clara who screams it from head to foot. 

She’s startled out of her thoughts when Natasha points to her and says something.

The farmers are nodding, and the wife grabs Clara’s arm and pokes at her bicep before her face splits into a smile.

“Um?” Clara asks.

“Dublin’s part of the Gagarin collective farm,” Natasha explains. “We get to stay here in exchange for help. They think you look strong.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Natasha shrugs. “You’ll work hard, but they’ll feed us.”

“What about you?”

Natasha smiles and pats her cheek. “I’m on recon, remember? I told them you’d do the work for both of us.”

“Of course you did,” Clara says. She looks at the couple who are watching Clara and Natasha with the same  _ what is going on _ expression that Clara was probably wearing when Russian was getting bantered about. Still, she doesn’t trust that they don’t speak English. “We’re splitting up more?”

“Just for now,” Natasha says, understanding Clara’s concerns. “Now, this is Mama and Papa.”

Clara’s eyes narrow. “No.”

“Yes,” Natasha says. 

Clara gives ‘Mama’ then ‘Papa’ a small wave. Next mission, they’re going somewhere that speaks English and where Clara doesn’t have to play Little House on the Prairie while Natasha galivants about. 

Natasha pats her cheek again and says, “Klarushka.”

Mama, a heavyset woman and the friendlier of the couple, smiles again and then comes at Clara with her arms open. Clara only realizes at the last second that it’s going to be a hug, and she manages not to fight back as she gets all the air squeezed out of her body.

“Klarushka,” Mama repeats. She pulls back to pinch Clara’s cheek, then her side. She says something that doesn’t sound pleased.

“You’re too skinny,” Natasha translates, clearly amused. “I have some contacts to meet with. Mama says chores then supper.”

Clara frowns at her side. There hadn’t been much to pinch there, but, “I’m fit, not skinny.”

Natasha just laughs and kisses the air next to Clara’s cheek before leaving. 

Mama brings Clara outside and points to two stacks of wood, one full of big pieces, the other pieces small enough for a fire. Clara can handle chopping wood. She nods and gets to work.

By the time she’s done she’s sweating, but warm, and then she goes with Papa to feed the animals, something that reminds her of the circus. She wonders if this is the life Natasha would’ve gotten to live if the Red Room hadn’t picked her up; a mother, a father, a farm. 

She wonders if this is a life Clara could’ve had, if she’d grown up in a different part of Iowa, if instead of a trailer, her dad had had a share in a farm. 

By the time the animals are taken care of, the sun’s almost gone, and the cold is settling in. Clara and Papa move the chopped wood to the side of the house where it’ll be easy to reach during the night and then go in to wash up and eat dinner.

Dinner is awesome.

Mama fills Clara’s plate with food and after Clara puts it all away, fills it up again. Clara looks up, startled, because she didn’t expect that, and she  _ could  _ eat more but she doesn’t need to. Mama just clucks her tongue and makes a pinching motion and hands the plate back.

Clara shrugs and finishes that too before holding her plate close to her so Mama can’t refill it. 

After dinner they have tea which Clara really hopes doesn’t have caffeine in it. She makes a sleeping motion with her hands and goes upstairs, because she’d rather be in her room alone than sitting with two people talking in a language she doesn’t understand. 

She regrets it once she gets up to her room, because it’s farther away from the fire, and there’s a noticeable chill in the air. She wonders if Natasha will kill her if Clara wraps herself up in all the blankets. 

It’s not like Natasha told Clara when she was going to be back. Clara doesn’t even know if she’s coming back tonight. 

Clara layers up and then gets under the blankets. The top quilt looks handmade and she wonders if Mama made it. 

She wants her electric blanket.

She wants her space heater, a birthday present from Coulson a couple years ago.

She’d even go for those handwarmer things, a standard part of her sniper kit, because if she can’t feel her hands then her accuracy dramatically decreases. 

She’s shivering and annoyed with herself when Natasha returns. It’s not as cold as Clara’s body is making it out to be, but whenever there’s that bite of cold, whenever it gets your nose or your ears, it takes her back to New York, takes her back to when she heard about Agatha, and even though the cold is mostly in her head, she can’t stop her body from reacting.

Natasha notices right away, cocking her head when she sees Clara huddled under two of the blankets. The third is on the other side of the bed for Natasha.

“It’s warm for this time of the year,” Natasha says.

Clara glares. She grew up surrounded by corn fields, not miles and miles of winter.

“Your file didn’t mention anything,” Natasha says.

Clara doesn’t even want to know when Natasha looked at her file. “Doesn’t say a lot of things about me.”

Natasha changes into pajamas. “Mine doesn’t either.”

“Find what you were looking for?” Clara asks.

Natasha turns off the light, the room going dark except for the sliver of moonlight that comes in through the window.

“It was a good start,” Natasha says. “I checked in with Coulson. He’s settled in.”

That’s another tough part of the mission. Clara’s grounded at the farm, and they decided it was too dangerous for communication from there unless necessary. Natasha’s the one who gets to slip away from people, who gets to get far enough out to be able to talk to Coulson.

Clara tells herself it’s fine. It’s not like she and Coulson ever went on a mission just the two of them. There have always been other people on missions with them.

“You share him well,” Natasha says, because even in the dark she sees everything. “Strangely well. You don’t share your food but you share your handler.”

“I’m his,” Clara says. His sniper, his recruit, his specialist. “He’s not mine.”

“Ah,” Natasha says, like this makes perfect sense to her.

She gets into the bed with Clara.

She doesn’t ask for another blanket, doesn’t act like she’s cold. Clara, in twice as many layers, with twice as many blankets, can feel the cold settling so deep she knows she won’t be able to sleep. She clings to her blankets tighter and wonders if she’d be able to sneak downstairs to sleep in front of the fire. 

After a moment, Natasha huffs and tugs on Clara’s blanket cocoon.

Clara obligingly unrolls even though it means the cold air washes over her, nothing to shield her from it. 

“You will tell no one,” Natasha says before curling up behind Clara.

She’s being spooned by the Black Widow, Clara thinks, a little hysterical as Natasha drapes all three blankets over the two of them. Natasha’s arm wraps around her, tighter than the blankets had, and Clara finds that when she’s not alone or scared, she’s not as cold either.

~*~

Clara wakes up with a hand around her throat. She goes completely still, evaluating her situation. Natasha is still tucked behind her, the way they’d fallen asleep last night. Natasha’s arm is no longer draped over her waist. It’s moved up until her hand is loose around Clara’s throat.

She knows when Natasha wakes up because the hand tightens for a moment before pulling back.

Natasha doesn’t say sorry.

Clara doesn’t ask her to.

There is just enough light to see by, and Clara forces herself out of bed.

“You should sleep more,” she tells Natasha. “I’m going to go feed the animals.”

She changes and meets Papa outside the barn. He looks surprised to see her, like he thought she was going to sleep in or he’d have to wake her up, or something. But then the surprise settles into early morning grumpiness and they feed and water the animals in silence. 

~*~

Natasha disappears during the day and sometimes returns for dinner and sometimes doesn’t, but Clara wakes up each morning with a warm body behind her and a hand on her neck.

It should probably freak her out more than it does. 

It does freak her out the first time she tries to get up before Natasha is awake and the hand tightens, Clara’s airway cut off before Natasha snaps awake and realizes who she’s in bed with.

After that, Clara doesn’t try to get out of bed until she knows Natasha is awake. 

They don’t talk about it - why Clara doesn’t like the cold, why Natasha can’t sleep without another person without being in a position to kill them, how they both sleep better like that then they should. 

Natasha continues to scout for information and keep in contact with Coulson, and Clara continues to help out at the farm. 

She’s exhausted at the end of each day, but it’s the good kind of exhausted, where your muscles are tired because you  _ worked _ , where falling into bed feels like the best kind of reward.

After the second day, Mama doesn’t try to get Clara to help in the kitchen, just leaves her to the heavy lifting and animal husbandry that Clara’s life has prepared her for. They’re a week into their stay when Clara comes in for lunch to see that they have company. 

Mama is fussing at the stove and fussing at the man in the kitchen, poking him the way she pokes Clara, the way that says  _ why aren’t you putting on weight when I feed you every day _ . Papa hangs his hat up on the hook next to the door, and Mama turns at the sound and launches into an excited babble.

This is one of the things Clara’s had to get used to, being here. She doesn’t talk much. There’s no point when no one can understand what she’s saying. And she and Natasha sleep together, but once they’re awake they go their separate ways. 

Clara’s started talking to the animals just because she needs to hear her own voice, she needs to hear English.

She ignores the conversation she can’t understand and goes to the washroom to clean her hands. On the way back, she’s stopped by a wooden ladle smacking her in chest. She looks from the spoon, to Mama, to the man the ladle is now pointing to.

“Klarushka,” Mama says which Natasha has explained is Clara’s name. Or some form of it anyways.

Clara nods, because that she knows.

The ladle taps the man’s cheek. “Sasha.”

Clara nods again. 

Introductions are about all she can handle and Mama clucks her tongue before pointing Clara to the cabinet. Setting the table is something else she can handle. She leaves Sasha and Papa to their conversation and gets the table ready for them to eat.

Lunch is a thick warm soup which Clara is all about, because it’s warm and it’s good, and she’s starving after a morning of working on the farm equipment. It involved a lot of heavy lifting and then a lot of tinkering, and she’s no Tony Stark, but she thinks everything should be ready to run in the spring. 

Clara drags her bread through the soup, but looks up when a poke to the shoulder gets her attention.

“Sasha,” Mama says, pointing to the man.

Clara nods because they’ve been through this. And then Mama starts making more gestures which means they’re playing around round of charades. Clara resolves to start picking up some Russian. If she’s going to be chasing down the Red Room with Natasha then this probably won’t be the last time she’s stuck with a family who doesn’t speak English.

Mama points to Papa and makes a kissing motion before rubbing her belly and pointing to Sasha.

“Oh,” Clara says. “He’s your son?”

Mama smiles, bright, happy, and covers Clara’s hand with hers. She rattles something off to her maybe-son, and he looks over at Clara, cheeks pink.

Oh no, Clara thinks. No. Nope. No way.

Some of the horror must show on her face, because Papa starts laughing, loud and booming, and Mama turns to him, scolding, and Clara hopes Natasha almost ready for them to move out and start shooting things.

~*~

“I think Mama’s trying to set me up with her son,” Clara says when Natasha slips in that night.

“That’s more interesting than anything that happened to me today,” Natasha says. “Is he cute?”

It’s weird hearing the words ‘is he cute’ come out of the Black Widow’s mouth. Clara shrugs. He’s earnest, and she’s shy, and he looks as uncomfortable as she did when Mama put them on the couch together for post-dinner tea.

They mostly just sat there, drinking their tea and blushing at each other, because they don’t share a language.

“We have no way to communicate,” Clara settles on as an answer.

Natasha looks completely unimpressed. “You don’t need words for the basest of human communication.”

Clara, to her horror, blushes.

Natasha, of course, notices, and she arches an eyebrow. “You don’t...communicate that way often?”

Clara shrugs. She knows from listening to Mason and Mariah complain that it’s hard to find someone to date when you can’t tell them what you do for a living, and while Madison seems to enjoy hooking up with strangers, Clara’s never seen the appeal in it.

She needs someone she can trust, and if she can’t trust them with her job then how can she trust them with anything else?

“Well,” Natasha says, flipping the lightswitch off and getting into bed. “Maybe you should consider it. I’m going to be gone for the next few nights. You might get cold.”

“I hate you,” Clara says.

Natasha just laughs and wraps her arm securely around Clara’s waist. “I’ll teach you a few phrases.”

“No way,” Clara says.

~*~

Natasha does disappear and for the first time since she got to Belarus, Clara spends the night on her own. 

She doesn’t like it.

Her eyes are heavy when she goes out to feed the animals, and even though she’s as quiet as she ever is at breakfast, Mama notices that something’s wrong. Her solution is to add another two sausages to Clara’s plate. 

Clara’s worked while tired before, and her chores don’t suffer for it.

She is suspicious, however, when after eating lunch she sees Papa  _ and  _ Mama getting dressed for the cold.

“What?” she asks.

Mama turns and says something that Clara doesn’t understand but through a lot of pointing and gesticulating, Clara gets the impression that she and Papa are going out. Out where, Clara has no idea, but she thinks they might be gone for a while, because Mama looks at Clara, then her son, mischievous, before dragging her husband out of the house.

“Fucking hell,” Clara mutters. 

She looks over at Sasha. He’s standing there, rubbing the back of his neck, like he doesn’t know what to do, either. They’ve been working together since he got here, and he’s strong and knows what he’s doing, but being a good son or farmhand doesn’t necessarily translate to good person. 

On the other hand, he’s got the build of a farmer, big and broad, and Clara bets  _ he _ doesn’t get cold at night.

Fucking hell indeed, she thinks before striding up to him. 

He looks startled by the sudden action, and he freezes when she grabs a fistful of his shirt and pulls him down so she can kiss him, but he gets with the program pretty quickly after that. His hands push up under her shirt, his callouses dragging against her skin in a way that makes her shiver. 

She’s got her own share of callouses, from weight lifting, from shooting, from a variety of things, and she wonders if he’ll like the feel of them as much as she likes the feel of his. 

He doesn’t like having to practically bend in half to kiss her, because he easily picks her up and brings her back to his room. It’s further away from the fire, but as soon as he drops her on the bed, he follows, blanketing her with flesh and muscle and heat and she doesn’t mind it so much.

On the bed, the almost foot of height he has on her doesn’t make much of a difference. 

The way his hands seem to dwarf her face is a little terrifying, but she knows four different ways to kill him from this position so she sets aside her fears and focuses on kissing him.

It’s better than she remembers.

He tries to touch her everywhere while they kiss - her cheek, her arm, her side, her hair - and he growls a little when he runs this hand through her hair only for it to end much quicker than he was probably expecting. 

Clara’s kept her hair short since she hacked it off in New York City, because she likes it short, because it’s harder to use against her in a fight if it’s short and because, on the few occasions she does meet up with strangers at bars, she doesn’t want her hair falling in her mouth.

One time she hooked up with a guy with long hair, and there’s nothing to get you out of the mood faster than getting a mouthful of hair. 

She runs her hands through his hair, shorter than hers, but still enough of it to get a bit of a grip. She tugs on it, proving a point, and the next time he touches her hair, he tests what all he can do with the length.

He gets enough of a grip to tilt her head back before pressing a deep, sucking kiss to her neck. It makes her squirm, because it’s kind of weird but kind of good and when she presses up against his erection, she feels teeth against her neck.

This is probably a terrible idea, she thinks, letting him put what’s going to be a truly impressive hickey in a very visible place, but since there is actually nothing she needs to be doing mission-wise she lets it happen.

~*~

When Mama and Papa get home, in time for dinner, they take one look at the scarf she has wrapped tight around her neck, and Mama starts hugging her and kissing her actually on the cheeks instead of just the air above them. 

Sasha looks a mixture of pleased and embarrassed.

Papa just shakes his head and goes to stoke the fire.

~*~

When Natasha gets back two days later, smelling of smoke and favoring her right leg, she looks between the two of them and says something that must be at least slightly off-color, because Sasha goes bright red and Papa barks out a short laugh.

“We were both successful, I see,” Natasha tells Clara, touching the scarf, a pleased smile on her face.

“You found what we were looking for?” Clara asks.

“I did. We leave tonight. Coulson will arrive in time to act as back-up. I’ll give you details later.” She touches the scarf again, sad this time. “You could stay.”

“I already have a life,” Clara reminds her.

“Life is about choosing,” Natasha says. “You taught me this. You could choose here.”

Clara shakes her head. It’s tempting, but she’s never been one for permanence like this. The only reason SHIELD isn’t too stationary for her is that she’s constantly going on missions, getting brief flashes of other lives, other things. 

“I already made my choice,” she says.

Mama, Papa, and Sasha are watching them, and Clara recognizes the look on their faces, people trying to understand a conversation they have no context for. Clara’s pretty sure that look has been on her face since she got here.

“Besides,” Clara says, “My Russian isn’t good enough yet. Now, sit down, it’s time for tea.”

Natasha sits down and Mama gets her a cup of tea, and they pretend to be a normal family until the tea is done. Clara can feel Sasha looking at her, wondering if she’s going to come to his room again tonight, but she can’t tell him she’s going to go blow something up instead.

Instead, she finishes her tea and touches Natasha’s arm and points upstairs.

Natasha rolls her eyes and says something Clara doesn’t understand before tugging Clara up the stairs.

“I feel a little bad abandoning them,” Clara says as they pack their things. Her bow and quiver are stashed in the barn, so they’ll have to make a quick stop on their way to the base Natasha’s found.

“They were fine before us,” Natasha says, “They’ll be fine after.”

“Still.”

Natasha looks over at her. “You would be a terrible undercover agent.”

“I’m here to shoot things,” Clara says. “Never thought I was meant for anything else.”

“There will be many things for you to shoot,” Natasha promises. “But first, this.”

She gives Clara a vial and nudges her to drink it. Natasha drinks an identical one.

“What was that?” Clara asks once she’s drank it.

“It’ll keep the tea from putting you to sleep,” Natasha says. “I drugged it. Wanted to make sure no one tried to follow us.”

Of course, Clara thinks. At least they don’t have to worry about the sneaking out part of leaving. 

Once their bags are packed and Clara makes the bed, neatly folding the blankets, they go out to the barn to get Clara’s bow and Natasha’s spare gun and then they head off down the road.

“You found the facility then?” Clara asks.

“A little one. Research. Using radioactive material. I can’t blow it up, because of the materials they’re working with, but if I try to get in my usual ways they’ll recognize me.”

“What’s the plan then?”

Natasha grins. “Go in my usual way.”

“You just said -”

“And when they send everything they’ve got to stop me, you take them out from above.”

“I hate these kinds of plans,” Clara says. “They always go to shit.”

“Aw, are you worried about me?” Natasha asks. “Sweet but unnecessary. Coulson already okayed the plan. I’m willing to play bait to get these guys.”

“And if I’m not fast enough?” Clara asks. 

“You are,” Natasha says, with so much conviction that Clara stops trying to figure out a Plan B.

~*~

They split up when they reach the bunker that the Red Room operatives are using, which means Clara has to settle for hissing, “An underground bunker?” into the comm instead of to Natasha’s face.

“I’m going to draw them out,” Natasha promises.

“I told you she wouldn’t like the plan,” Coulson says, and Clara’s not anticipating the sheer relief she feels at hearing his voice after so long.

“It’ll work,” Natasha says. 

“Hawkeye in position,” Clara says, because she recognizes that kind of stubborn. And Coulson wouldn’t have given the go ahead on the plan unless he thought they could get out of it without major casualties. 

“Coulson in position.”

“Then let’s get this party started,” Natasha says.  

Clara - barely - manages to keep her mouth shut when she realizes that the plan is actually Natasha just walking up to the bunker door. She doesn’t get twenty feet from it before an alarm sounds, and Natasha stops where she is and just waits.

“They’ll assume she’s alone,” Coulson says. “Hold fire until my order. We want to draw out as many as we can.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, Clara thinks.

“Copy that, sir,” is what she says.

The bunker door opens and ten men rush out in full combat gear, guns raised as they make a semi circle around Natasha. None of them get closer than ten feet. 

“Such a small welcome party?” Natasha asks. “My feelings are hurt.”

Another ten men come out of the bunker and behind them, a man that screams ‘bad and in charge’ follows them out. He’s older, white with greying hair, and he hasn’t bothered with the body armor of his soldiers like he doesn’t think Natasha can get to him.

Idiot, Clara thinks.

“Welcome home, Natalia,” the man says. “We were wondering when you would return.”

“I don’t care for villain monologues,” Coulson says. “You take him, we want him alive, and then be ready for chaos. Widow, you ready?”

Natasha nods, a subtle movement, but the man clearly sees it, and Clara sees the fear on his face, sees him take a step back like he’s going to run back into the bunker.

She shoots him before he can, arrow landing in the meat of his shoulder. 

The soldiers react immediately, half of them looking for where the shot came from, the other half giving their full attention to Natasha. Clara hears a gunshot - Coulson - as she gets her next arrow ready. She puts down two before they start firing back, and puts down another one who guessed pretty good where she was hiding before checking to make sure Natasha’s fine.

She is.

She used the Widow Bite on a soldier that ventured too close, and she’s using his body armor as a shield as she fires on the other soldiers.

The men stand no chance, Clara firing at them from above, Coulson from the other side, and Natasha right in front of them. 

The whole thing takes maybe fifteen minutes and then it’s just Natasha surrounded by bodies in black body armor. She drops the man she was using as a shield and goes over to the leader of the group.

“He set a self-destruct sequence,” she says.

“There goes not blowing the place up,” Clara says.

“Priority is bringing the prisoner to the extraction point,” Coulson says. “A different team will come and make sure there’s no clean-up that needs to be done. Is the bunker door locked?”

Natasha drags the man over to the door and presses his thumb to something. “Not anymore.”

“Hawkeye, restrain the prisoner and find something to drive us out of here. Widow, you and I are going to clear the field.”

Clara comes down from her perch and ties the man up. She checks his watch. “You’ve got 7 minutes and 27 seconds remaining, sir.”

“Noted, Hawkeye.”

She finds a truck that’s easy enough to hotwire while Coulson and Natasha drag the soldiers into the bunker. Clara tries to not think about how the men she knocked unconscious are about to be blown up.

Casualties happen, she reminds herself. She throws the prisoner in the back of the truck, pulls out some more rope so that she can secure him, and then pulls out her tarp to throw over him. She climbs into the driver’s seat and pulls up next to the bunker.

“Time to go,” she says.

Coulson takes shotgun. Natasha gets in the bed of the truck with the prisoner. 

Clara drives off, and they can feel the rumble of the ground when the bunker collapses. 


	5. Chapter 5

Clara can’t walk around SHIELD in scarfs or a turtleneck so she’s resigned to getting stared at for the giant hickey on her neck until it fades. 

When they debrief, Fury takes one look at her and says, “Well, that injury wasn’t marked in the mission report.”

“That’s because it wasn’t an injury, sir,” Clara says.

Her friends are worse. 

Her first meal back at SHIELD, she takes Natasha and her tray and sits at a table with the M-squad and Burns.

Mason takes one look at her and squeals.

“I was fitting in with the locals,” Clara says.

“Don’t you mean the locals were fitting in with you?” Mariah asks. She waggles her eyebrows.

“This is all your fault,” Clara tells Natasha. 

“That would be a fun rumor to start,” Natasha says.

“It’s already started,” Burns says. “While you were gone. I think it might have originated with Harris.”

“Of course it did,” Clara says. She touches the mark on her neck. “The family I was undercover with had a son.”

They all look at her like they’re waiting for more.

“Really?” Mason asks, when it’s clear Clara’s not going to share anything else. “That’s all we get?” She looks over at Natasha.

“I was doing recon,” she says. “I don’t know any more than you do.”

“Are you agents or gossips?” Clara asks. She picks up her first piece of pizza since going on their mission and grins. “I’ve missed you.”

“More interested in pizza than men,” Madison says, shaking her head. 

“Pizza’s never disappointed me,” Clara says. 

She attacks her pizza with gusto and when it becomes obvious that she’s said all she has to say on the subject of men, people stop asking questions.

~*~

Clara and Natasha become something of legends at SHIELD or, rather, Natasha becomes a legend and Clara gets pulled along in her wake. 

They go on mission after mission, dismantling what was left of the Red Room after Natasha’s initial assault. 

And then Budapest happens.

Budapest -

Budapest is awful.

It’s the first time Clara goes up against people who are immune or at least resistant to her paralytic arrows.

She learns this when one of them rises from where she thought he was unconscious on the ground and grabs Natasha.

In Budapest, she almost loses Natasha.

In Budapest, she has to kill more people that she wants to think about.

After it’s over, once they’re back in DC and they’ve been debriefed, Clara sits at Natasha’s bedside and says, “We’re never talking about this again.”

Natasha, an IV in her hand and bruises scattered across her body marking how Clara messed up, how she almost failed, just tilts her head and says, “Never talking about what?”

~*~

Clara was never supposed to be in Tajikistan. 

She was on a mission with Sitwell, taking a couple junior agents on their first mission while Natasha and Coulson went to Tajikistan to investigate a Red Room vault. 

Clara’s in Sitwell’s hotel room with the rest of the juniors, discussing the intel they picked up today when Clara’s cell phone rings.

“It’s not social hour,” Sitwell says.

Clara ignores him and flips open her phone, because that ringtone can only mean one thing -

“Situation,” she demands.

“Coulson’s captured,” Natasha says. “Mission objective failed. I need back-up.”

Clara doesn’t think Natasha would’ve admitted needing help when they first brought her in, but she’s asking for it now, and Clara turns to Sitwell. “A moment alone, sir?”

Sitwell knows that she talks on the comms when she’s bored and likes to drop out of air vents to scare the trainees, but he also knows that she knows how to be serious. He waves the juniors out. Once the door closes, Clara puts the phone on speaker.

“Coulson’s captured,” Clara says, filling Sitwell in. “Natasha’s on her own.”

“I can complete the mission objective,” Natasha says, “Or I can bring Coulson back. Give me Barton, and I can do both.”

“Have you checked in with Fury?” Sitwell asks.

Natasha’s silence is telling. 

“Coulson’s my handler,” Clara says, amazed at how steady her voice is. “And Natasha’s my partner. We both know you could do the mission we’re on solo.”

“You’re going to go whether or not I give you permission,” Sitwell says.

“And I’d rather not have a black mark on my record.”

Sitwell takes a deep breath. “Phil’s the best friend I have. I’m sending you to retrieve him. Widow, you’re still on primary mission objective.”

“Noted,” Natasha says.

“I’m on my way to you,” Clara tells her. “Gather intel but don’t make any moves until I get there.”

They hang up and Clara turns to Sitwell. “Thank you, sir.”

“Bring him home,” Sitwell says.

Clara gathers her things and gets herself to an airport and on a flight to the Qurghonteppa International Airport. It’s a long flight, made longer by the fact that she can’t help but worry about Coulson. She knows he’s been trained to withstand torture, but that doesn’t mean he’ll enjoy it. It just means he won’t give up any SHIELD secrets while it happens.

She catches a few restless hours of sleep and then she’s landing at the airport and going straight to baggage claim, because the ID she brought with her allowed her to check her bow but wouldn’t let her carry it on. 

She doesn’t relax until her bow is in her hands again, and she gets out of the airport and hands a slip of paper to the first cab driver she sees.

He takes her to the address on the paper, and Natasha meets them at the curb, gives the driver some money, and then brings Clara inside a coffee shop. They can’t stay here long. Clara’s bow is in a case, but it’s still bulky and noticeable. 

Natasha gets her a coffee and hands it over with a napkin underneath it. “Go there and get Coulson. I have an object to retrieve.”

“They already got Coulson,” Clara says. “Will you be fine on your own?”

“I blend in,” Natasha says. “I can complete the mission. You get our handler.”

Our handler.

If Coulson’s life wasn’t in danger, Clara would smile.

As it is, she needs to get moving.

Natasha presses some money into her hands. Clara doesn’t ask where she got it.

“I’ve got a safe house in Uzbekistan,” Natasha says. “We meet there when it’s all done. It’s the second address I gave you.”

Clara doesn’t bother saying good luck, knowing it’ll offend Natasha. Instead, she takes her coffee, her napkin, and her bow, and goes to find a new cab.

She uses her phone to figure out where exactly she’s going. Towards the mountains. Also on her phone are surveillance pictures Natasha sent her. She studies the pictures, taking note of the military-type structure and wondering if she has the right kind of arrows for what she needs. 

“Miss?” the cab driver asks.

Clara looks up to see them out of the city. There’s empty land surrounding them, the hint of mountains out the left window. Clara hands the cab driver some of her money and it must be enough because he doesn’t call her back. 

She makes the rest of her trek on foot, reaching the mountains south of where she’s aiming to be and then hiking out to where Coulson is being held. The mountains mean a harder, and longer, trek, but it also means she has cover so she takes it. 

She forces herself to make good time, aware that every minute she’s hiking is a minute Coulson’s getting tortured, but she doesn’t push herself too hard knowing she won’t do him any good if she’s too exhausted to launch a rescue.

The thing about fortified mountain shelters is that they need a way to recycle air, and needing to let air in means air vents. Clara’s able to skip the guards at the front as well as whatever state-of-the-art security measure they have and slip into the building from the top.

Trusting that prisoners are always kept in the lowest and darkest part of any building she goes down until she can’t go down anymore. 

It’s from this vent she can see down into the room where Coulson is being held. At least, she assumes the man suspended from the ceiling with a bag over his face is Coulson. 

There are two men in the room with him, one picking over a tray of sharp instruments, the image wasted on a prisoner that can’t see him. The second man is standing by the door, bored. Clara carefully goes through her weapon bag, skipping the bow and going for the blow gun. She doesn’t have the space here to draw, and she needs something that’s going to be quiet and efficient.

She drops both guards before they realize what’s happening. 

When the bodies hit the ground, Coulson’s head tilts up, eyes searching even though he can’t see.

Clara slips out of the air vent.

“Close your eyes,” she says before taking the bag off his head.

He looks like someone used his face for target practice. 

“Still prettier than Sitwell,” she tells him.

He laughs, then winces, and Clara realizes he probably has some broken ribs.

“You have a good way out of here, sir?” she asks. “I don’t think the way I came in is going to work.”

“Where’s the Widow?” he asks, words slurred. 

“Not here.”

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Turns out Sitwell likes you,” Clara says. She supports his weight as she gets him down from the chains he’s been hanging from.

He almost takes them both to the ground when the ceiling stops supporting any of his weight. 

“You’re heavy, sir.”

“I’ll start dieting when we get back to SHIELD.”

She huffs a laugh and leads them to the door. Looks like they’re getting out the hard way. “Can you shoot a gun?”

Coulson flexes his fingers. He winces the whole time and they’re stiff, but he holds his hand out and she gives him a gun off one of the bodies.

The narrow hallways work to their advantage as they make their way out of the compound. It’s easy to pick people off when only one or two can come at them at once. Clara has to switch to a gun halfway through, because she doesn’t have enough arrows to put down every person they run into.

She doesn’t think about the people she’s killing, knows she will later, but right now she’s focused on getting Coulson out of here safe. 

She doesn’t lead them out the front door; rather, she brings them to the garage and she gets Coulson into the front seat of a Jeep and tells him to watch the doors while she hotwires the thing. 

He shoots a guard and misses, shoots again and he goes down.

Clara gets the Jeep running and punches the air.

“The door’s still locked,” Coulson says.

“Ye of little faith.” Now, she takes out her bow. “Cover your ears.”

He does and she shoots an exploding arrow at the ceiling. It triggers the fire alarm when it goes and the garage doors automatically open. 

“Here goes nothing,” she says and slams on the gas. 

They tear out of the compound, bullets chasing them as they go, but Clara gets them on the road and gets on the M34, driving as fast as she dares to give them as much of a head start as they can get.

Coulson groans in the passenger seat.

“Sorry, sir,” she says, because she knows this can’t be comfortable. “We just need to get across the border. Natasha has a safe house.”

“Where’s Natasha?” 

“Completing the mission. You’re lucky my schedule was free.”

She can see Coulson fading, and she needs him awake and alert until they’ve reached safety and she can see what kind of medical attention he needs.

“Your schedule wasn’t free. Sitwell shouldn’t have authorized this.”

“Natasha had to pick saving you or completing the mission. I made it so we could get both.”

“Can’t imagine Fury’s too pleased.”

“I don’t think anyone consulted him,” Clara says.

Coulson tips his head back against his seat.

“No sleeping,” Clara says. “We don’t have to talk about the mission, but you can’t sleep until we’ve reached the safe house. Haven’t you rested enough recently?”

“Hanging from the ceiling isn’t actually comfortable. Neither is your getaway driving.”

Clara pulls into the opposite lane to pass the car in front of her. He lays on his horn, and she cheerfully flips him off. 

“You’re not being very subtle,” he says.

“Right now, I’m aiming for as much of a lead as I can get. Subtle comes later. You’re not very mobile, so if we don’t get a good head start then it’s back to a firefight, and  _ those _ are not subtle.”

“This is why you were with Sitwell,” Coulson tells her, “You’ve got a lot to teach the junior agents.”

“Sitwell knows more, and he’s got more patience. I was more important here.”

Which, of course, begs the question - why wasn’t she here in the first place? She looks over at Coulson, the man too pale in the midday sun, and decides that question can wait. She is going to get her answers eventually, because she should’ve been here. Coulson and Natasha are  _ her  _ team.

They have to sneak across the border which means they have to ditch the car, and it’s slow getting into Uzbekistan, and even slower getting to the safe house in Payzava, but they do eventually make it. The safe house is really an apartment, the key hidden in the brass 19. Clara has to unscrew the 9 to get to it, but she gets herself and Coulson into the apartment, and Coulson stumbles over to the bed before gratefully sinking down onto it.

“Can’t sleep quite yet,” Clara says, locking the door then doing a quick sweep of the two room apartment to make sure it’s secure. 

Once she’s sure they’re alone, she searches the cabinets until she finds Natasha’s medical kit.

“Alright,” Clara says, coming over to Coulson. “Time to see how you’re doing.”

She unknots his tie then begins undoing the buttons on his dress shirt. “You know, if they really wanted to torture you they should’ve put you in some distressed denim and a polo. Letting you keep the suit was a rookie mistake.”

She strips him down to his briefs, tasteful and plain black, and she evaluates his injuries. From what she can tell, it’s nothing life threatening, but he’s going to be hurting for a while. She patches up what can be patched up and then helps him into the center of the bed. 

She tucks him into bed and finally lets him sleep, going to the kitchen to filter some water for when he wakes up. She’ll have to try and get him to eat something, too.

It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep, and Clara sits against the wall, phone next to her, bow in her lap.

Coulson stirs but doesn’t wake up when her phone rings.

“Situation?” she asks, picking up.

“En route,” Natasha says, “Package secure.”

“We’re here.”

“I heard about some commotion,” Natasha says, “Figured that must be you. ETA one hour.”

“I’ll have dinner ready,” Clara says.

A little less than an hour later, Clara’s stirring soup from a can, and she hears a knock at the door.

“Honey, I’m home,” Natasha says from the other side.

Clara lets her in.

“I did a sweep of the area,” Natasha says. “Doesn’t look like either of us are being followed. I contacted Fury for an extraction. He’s working on a plan. Is the situation critical?”

Clara looks over at the bed where Coulson’s beginning to stir. “Not critical.”

Natasha taps a few things on her phone. Clara goes to take the soup off the stove. She distributes it between three bowls and brings them over to the little table by the bed. 

“They got you good, huh?” Natasha asks when Coulson cracks his eyes open.

“Not good enough.”

Natasha cracks a smile and drops a satchel on the bed. “Retrieval successful.”

Something rolls out of the satchel, something small, shiny, and Clara picks it up before she even realizes what it is. And once she does -

“This is a faberge egg,” she says.

“It’s part of a collection,” Natasha says. “Apparently, when you get the whole collection there’s a secret message. I always thought it was a folk tale.”

Clara’s listening to Natasha, but she isn’t looking at her. She’s staring straight at Coulson. 

“A collection?” Clara asks.

Natasha immediately recognizes that something is wrong, and it’s at the same time that Coulson looks up to meet her eyes.

“Langton never got his egg back,” Clara says.  _ She _ feels like the one who just got tortured by the enemy, her throat swollen, her words struggling to come out.

“He didn’t,” Coulson agrees.

Clara turns the egg over in her hands. The last time she had one of these, her brother stabbed her. The last time she had one of these, she killed her mentor.

The last time she had one of these -

“There was an easy entry into the vault,” Clara says, pieces clicking together into her mind. “There was an easy entry, and Gerber told me to forget about it. You  _ wanted _ the vault broken into. Because you wanted the egg.”

“Barton,” Coulson starts but Clara shakes her head.

Now that the pieces are falling, she has to see this through to the end. Because, “If they wanted a break-in then they couldn’t listen to my suggestion. That’s why Gerber was point, wasn’t it? Because if he brushed me off, I wouldn’t - because if it had been Sitwell, if it had been  _ you _ …” She wouldn’t have trusted them again.

They put her with a new handler, a handler they never expected her to work with again, and they manipulated things so the vault could get broken into.

“We didn’t know the identity of the team,” Coulson says.

Clara drops the egg like it’s burned her. It falls harmlessly onto the comforter.

SHIELD lied to her. SHIELD manipulated her.

She killed Trickshot on that mission.

She killed him  _ over that egg _ . 

She thinks she’s going to be sick.

“Barton -”

“And this is why you didn’t want me on this mission,” Clara says. “You didn’t want me to find out. You -” She presses the heels of her palms to her eyes, “Your soup is getting cold. You need to eat. You’ve had a hard few days.”

“Barton,” he tries again, but she walks into the tiny little bathroom, the only place she can go.

They’re stuck here until the extraction. She can’t hide out in the bathroom forever. But she can’t be in the same room as him right now. 

She knows that SHIELD isn’t perfect, knows that no organization she could work for would be. She understands not being read into every part of a mission, but she doesn’t like being tricked into things. And the fact that they put Gerber in charge meant they figured she would figure it out one day and they wanted to make sure she didn’t blame Coulson or Sitwell for being lied to.

They wanted to make sure she’d still trust Coulson and Sitwell enough to work with them.

No, not they.

_ Fury _ .

It - it feels like Trick telling her that the circus was a sham.

Her foundation is shattered, and she doesn’t know what to do.

So she just sits on the closed toilet seat, head in her hands.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there when the door opens. Clara lifts her head high enough to see it’s Natasha and then drops it back down again.

“Coulson ate his soup, and he’s sleeping again,” Natasha says.

“His body needs it. Did he drink the water I set out?”

“Yes.”

Natasha shuts the bathroom door and leans against it. “You’re upset.”

“Last time I saw one of those eggs - it wasn’t a good mission. I’m sorry. I thought SHIELD was better than it is. I brought you in and -”

Natasha kneels at Clara’s feet and eases Clara’s hands from her face.

“I chose to come in,” Natasha says. “SHIELD was the best of bad choices, and when I get a better choice, I am taking that one.”

Clara looks at her,  _ really _ looks at her.

“I was under no illusions of the kind of organization I was joining,” Natasha says.

Unlike Clara. She tells herself that she was 17 when SHIELD found her, she was alone and desperate and anything would look good. It doesn’t excuse her for not opening her fucking eyes at some point in the past five years. 

“I don’t blame you,” Natasha says. “You gave me a choice, and I will repay that debt. When I find something better, you can come with me.”

The problem is - the problem is that SHIELD isn’t  _ good _ , but it’s better than anything else out there.

“I killed people,” Clara says. “I killed people getting Coulson out of that compound, and he didn’t even want me there. I -” Sitwell’s going to get in trouble for this.

If Coulson didn’t want her rescuing him from being tortured, then whoever okayed her departure - “Do you have an untraceable phone?”

Natasha rolls easily with the change in conversation. “Of course.”

“Can I use it?”

Natasha goes and gets it for her, and Clara gets Sitwell’s number from her phone and punches it in. 

Sitwell picks up after two rings with a cautious, “Hello?”

“You didn’t okay my rescue mission,” Clara says.

“Barton?” he asks.

“I left without permission,” Clara tells him. 

“You’ll get a mark in your file,” he says.

“Better me than you.” 

“Barton -”

“I wasn’t supposed to be here,” Clara says. “I’m probably going to get demoted. It’s best you had nothing to do with this. Oh, we got Agent Coulson. He’s going to be fine.”

“Barton -”

“I have to go before someone hacks this line. Remember, you had nothing to do with this. I’ll see you back at base, sir.”

“Of course. Safe travels. And Barton? I owe you one.”

Clara hangs up and hands the phone back to Natasha. “Thank you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Natasha says.

“Sitwell’s a good agent. And it doesn’t matter what level I am, it’s clear you, me, and Coulson are a team. They’re not going to break that up.”

“You’re still going to work with him?”

She’s curious, not judgmental.

“He’s my handler,” Clara says, “and Fury’s pulling his strings just like he’s pulling everyone else’s. Besides, it’s not like we have anywhere else to go.”

“Not yet,” Natasha says.


	6. Chapter 6

Clara gets demoted back down to a level 3 and put on probation. She’s confined to the base for three months with nothing to do but train, talk to Dr. Suresh, and convince Coulson that she still trusts him.

“You’re my handler,” she eventually tells him. “I trust you or I die.”

He doesn’t look comforted by that.

“And I trust that SHIELD doesn’t want me dead,” she adds. “I’m a good asset. But I only work with you and Sitwell from now on. Fury wanted to make sure you two were the only ones I trusted, and he succeeded. So.”

Things do get better.

Because Clara was telling the truth when she said she still trusted Coulson and once she, Coulson, and Natasha are back in the field, it’s obvious that she trusts him. 

All it takes is a couple mission where they almost die, and Clara adding some new scars to her collection, for their team to become a team again. 

She does, however, refuse to go on any more missions involving faberge eggs. 

“They’re bad luck,” she says. “Nothing good happens around them.”

No one forces the issue. 

Clara knows Natasha is still hunting them down, but Coulson takes Natasha and a few other agents on those missions, and Clara gets to work with Burns or the M-squad or goes with Sitwell and the juniors.

She gets herself back to Level 4 and then even reaches Level 5. She doesn’t think she’ll advance beyond that. It doesn’t bother her as much as Fury thinks it should, but Clara isn’t ambitious like him. She grew up in a trailer, then in a circus, then on the streets.

All she’s ever wanted is somewhere safe to sleep and food on the table. She’s gotten so much more than that, but she’s grateful for it instead of pushing for more. She doesn’t want to push too far and lose it. 

So things are normal at SHIELD. There are missions and the world gets weirder - a giant green monster they named The Hulk appears and disappears just as suddenly - but SHIELD broadens its training to deal with it. Weird is what they do. 

After green rage monsters and piranha monkeys and whatever the hell they fought in Kabul, Clara wouldn’t be surprised if they found out aliens were real.

“I’m just saying,” Clara’s telling Burns as they spar. “If you’d seen the things I’ve seen, you would believe in aliens, too.”

“Spoilers,” Burns says, dancing away from Clara’s strike, “Pyramids were built by slaves. The Mayans were advanced because they’re smart, not because of the ‘gift of alien technology’.”

“I’m not saying I want aliens to be real,” Clara says. “People do enough shit to each other without introducing new species. I’m just saying I’d believe it if they were.”

“We should put you on the History Channel,” Burns says.

“Whatever,” Clara says, and uses a move Natasha taught her to sweep Burns’s legs out from underneath her. Burns ends up on her back on the mat and Clara smiles before giving her a hand up.

“Best out of three,” Burns says.

“Sure,” Clara says.

They’re getting back into positions when Mariah’s, “Holy shit,” makes them turn to look at her.

She was on the stationary bike, scrolling through her phone, but she’s frozen mid-pedal. She has the attention of the entire gym, about fifteen agents total.

“Tony Stark just got kidnapped in Afghanistan,” she says.

Madison drops the weights she was lifting, the plates clanking against the floor before rolling away.

“Holy shit indeed,” Sorel says.

“What happened?” Burns asks.

Before she can answer, Clara’s phone starts beeping. She goes over to her discarded sweatshirt and sweatpants and pulls her phone out of the pocket.

“I’ve got a meeting with Fury,” she says.

Everyone in the gym is now looking at her.

“Don’t need to guess what it’s about,” Burns says.

Clara throws her clothes over her arm and awkwardly exits the gym. Tony Stark kidnapped. It’s one of those things that seems too ridiculous to be real, like whenever the tabloids claim that Hugh Jackman or some other actor is dead. But if Fury’s calling her to his office then there must be some truth to it. 

When she gets there, Coulson, Sitwell, and Hill are already there, crowded around a small speaker. Clara arrives for the second half of what appears to be a briefing on what happened. 

“Lt. Colonel Rhodes is leading the search and rescue,” the man on the phone says. “This is a military operation. We appreciate your offer of help, but we don’t need it. We’ll keep you updated on our progress.”

“Of course,” Fury says, managing to sound sincere even when Clara knows he has to be forming at least a dozen different plans of his own.

When the man hangs up, Fury’s expression hardens. “We’re getting Stark back.”

“Do we recall the Widow?” Coulson asks.

“Too deep in her mission,” Fury says. “Too much work has gone into it to compromise it now. But we’re all  _ available _ hands on deck for this one. Stark is too valuable to lose. Barton, we’re sending you in straight away. Go pack a desert bag and report to Hanger 2. You’ll get a full debrief on the way.”

“Yes, sir,” she says.

She leaves and she doesn’t run, but her pace is quick as she stops by her quarters, then the supply room to get what she needs. 

She’s been to Afghanistan before, and she knows how to fight in the desert, knows how to fight in the mountains. It doesn’t stop her from wishing Natasha could be on this mission with her. But Natasha’s Natalia right now, hoping to uproot a Ten Rings operation in Russia by posing as the Black Widow. 

She’s so deep she’s barely allowed to make mission update contact let alone casual contact. It’s the longest time Clara’s gone without talking to her since she brought Natasha into SHIELD, and it’s only going to go on longer.

Clara’s on her own for this one.

Well, she amends, seeing Coulson waiting by the quinjet for her, not completely alone.

“Stark funds SHIELD,” Coulson says as Clara joins him on the jet, “and he designs basically everything we use. Fury doesn’t think anyone else at SI will be as committed to us as he is.”

“I know retrieval is priority,” Clara says. 

“The Director wants it clear how much of a priority.”

Clara straps into her seat. She doesn’t get to fly this trip, she has intel to catch up on. “Tell me what we know.”

Coulson explains to her about the missile demonstration, the ambush, what information they’ve been able to gather from the military, from their own people and, “Lt. Colonel Rhodes has been cooperative,” Coulson says. “I’m sure the military hasn’t authorized him to share information but-”

“Stark is his best friend,” Clara says, “and his priority is getting his friend back, not a military asset or agency bankroller.”

Coulson gives her a mild look. He might as well be glaring. “ _ But _ , the Lt. Colonel recognizes that the more eyes looking for Stark the better. As we get more information and brief more people, there will be more agents on the ground with you.”

“You’re counting on me seeing things no one else does,” Clara says.

“Yes.”

No pressure or anything. Clara flips through the sparse file they’ve managed to put together. Good thing she thrives under pressure. 

She gets dropped off in Afghanistan with a comm piece, an outfit complete with goggles to keep the sand from getting in her eyes, and enough supplies to last her for a week. She’s supposed to meet up with Coulson in five days for a resupply and to tell him what her initial scouting tells her.

What her initial scouting tells her is that whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing, which isn’t a surprise.

What it also tells her is that they wanted Stark alive.

“No ransom demand?” she asks when she meets back up with Coulson after five days of dodging all the military personnel that were crawling over the scene. 

“None that we’ve received,” Coulson says. 

He hands her a bottle of water. She has no idea how he’s in a full suit in the middle of the desert. 

“Have you received one?” Coulson asks as he leads her into a tent. 

Before she can say the only person she’s talked to in the past five days is herself, she realizes that there’s someone else in the tent.

“No,” Lt. Colonel Rhodes says. “Are you expecting one?”

“He was taken alive,” Clara says. “Whoever led the ambush wanted a big distraction so they could grab Stark. That was the primary focus. If they’re not looking to trade him for something, then they wanted  _ him _ .”

Rhodes drags a hand down his face. “There are a lot of groups here that could use a weapons engineer of his ability.”

“It’ll help if we can figure out which one,” Clara says. “If this is Al Qaeda then I’m looking in a different place then if it’s AIM or even just a group of locals pissed that their country’s being torn up.”

“Doubtful on the locals,” Coulson says. “They wouldn’t have the numbers or ability to pull off something like this.”

“Professionals increase the chances that he lives,” Clara says.

“If he gives them what they want,” Rhodes says. “And I don’t know if you know this, but Tony can be a contrary bastard.”

Clara smiles, a small one, but it feels good. 

“We’ve also finished the analysis of the blood at the scene,” Coulson says. “There was a lot of it, but we did identify a sample as Stark’s. He’s injured, extent unknown.”

And there goes Clara’s smile. 

“If they did want something from him, then they’ll give him medical attention,” Coulson says. 

“Only as much as will make him functional,” Clara says. She looks at the map spread out on the table. “I should pack for a longer trip, start making my way through the mountains.”

“There’s too many of them,” Rhodes says.

“That’s why you’ll work towards narrowing down my search,” Clara says. “But I’m betting wherever he is is protected from airstrikes and it won’t be easily seen from the air. We need to start a search, but it has to be a subtle one. If they think we’re coming after him, they might decide he’s not worth it.”

“Or kill you with whatever he’s making,” Coulson says.

Coulson can always be counted on to lighten up a situation. “Or that.” 

“I’m coming with you,” Rhodes says.

“You can’t,” Clara tells him. “You’re Stark’s military liaison. You can’t go missing, too many people will ask questions. And SHIELD’s not technically on this retrieval.”

“So I just sit around and wait to hear about my friend?”

“No, you keep doing what you’re doing,” Clara says. “You work with the military, and you gather as much information as you can, and you pass it on to me so it doesn’t take me three years to find your friend.”

Rhodes looks like he’s going to argue more but then he sighs, shoulders slumping forward, looking like he hasn’t slept since Tony first went missing. 

“He was supposed to ride with me,” Rhodes says. “He told me I was boring and rode with someone else. I should’ve been there with him. I should’ve kept him from getting captured.”

“They would’ve killed you,” Coulson says. “And then there’d be no one helping us get Stark back.”

“Tony,” Rhodes says. “His name is Tony.”

Clara leaves them to go start assembling a pack that will give her more freedom. She’ll need a way to get water, need MREs in case she can’t find anything to hunt, and she’s going to need firepower. It’s a lot to carry.

She really hates solo missions.

She’s debating her bow versus a gun when Rhodes finds her.

She goes with the bow. She’s more comfortable with it, the ammo is reusable, and it’s quiet. R&D has made improvements on her arrows, so they have enough enough paralytic to be reused. Sometimes, the mechanism fails and injects the whole thing and overdoses a target, but Clara has to take that risk.

“Here,” Rhodes says, handing her what looks like a walking stick. “For the mountains.”

“Thanks?” Clara says.

“It’s a prototype.” Rhodes presses a button and a blade pops out of one end. “In case the fighting’s up close.”

“Nifty,” Clara says. She retracts the blade. “Guess this means we don’t have to worry about you disappearing.”

“Agent Coulson had some good points.” Rhodes sounds like it’s difficult for him to admit that. “I’m more useful here. And I hear you’re good at what you do.”

“Very,” she says. And, because she can only imagine how she’d be feeling if Natasha was missing and she wasn’t allowed to go after her, she says, “I met Tony once. A few times, really.”

Rhodes winces. “If he was inappropriate -”

“Not like that,” Clara says. “I was 17, had just come to SHIELD, and I was a bit of a pain in the ass. He was designing a simulator for us. I watched him, well, pestered him mostly. He was surprisingly patient. He - we -” Clara struggles for the words she wants. “I have a partner at SHIELD. If she went missing, I’d want to make sure someone was looking for her that cared about her, not just that she was an agent.

“I’m not saying that Tony and I are friends. He probably doesn’t remember me. But he got me interested in coding. I’ve been on a couple bodyguard missions for him that he didn’t know about. He’s not just the guy who makes our weapons.”

Rhodes is quiet for a long moment before he says, “Thank you.” And then, “I don’t think we’ve properly met. I’m Rhodey.”

She shakes his offered hand. “Clara. Hawkeye, if you prefer.”

“Bring him home,” Rhodes asks. “Please.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

~*~

Clara smashes her walking stick into the enemy tent. This is the third Al Qaeda guerrilla team she’s found, but there’s no sign of Stark, just like there hadn’t been a sign of him earlier. She beats the tent until it collapses, keeps swinging her stick until she’s breathing hard and sweating from more than just the sun that beats down constantly on her.

The four members of the cell are tied to different tent poles, and she’s sent the coordinates Coulson so he can collect them. She doesn’t need any of their weapons, but she does raid their food and water supplies. 

She’s found three Al Qaeda cells, two extremist groups, and one goat herder since being assigned to find Stark, but she’s no closer to finding Stark himself.

The longer he’s out there, the greater the chance that he’s dead. It’s a thought that’s increasingly difficult to push out of her head. If she doesn’t find him then he dies, and that’s on her. If she doesn’t find him - she drops her head into her hands.

She is going to find him.

She has to.

She starts making a proper meal, the first she’s had in a week, and waits for Coulson to show. Usually she just leaves her captives for him, but she wants to top off her arrows, and she wants to know if he’s learned anything new since their last check-in.

He doesn’t look surprised to see her when he gets to the coordinates she gave him.

She doesn’t look surprised to see that he has Rhodey with him.

“Hungry?” she asks. “I made enough. You might not want to get too close to me, though. I reek.”

“It’s the Ten Rings,” Coulson says, and Clara stops trying to keep the mood light.

“Shit,” she says. “Our mutual friend?”

“Unrelated.”

Clara relaxes. Natasha’s fine. 

“R&D rigged this up,” Coulson says handing her some kind of reader. “Stark was showing off the Jericho missile when they took him. We think that’s what they want.”

“This will help detect it?”

“The kind of energy signatures he’ll be putting out are much harder to camouflage than heat signatures,” Coulson says. “But we can’t narrow the position down more than ‘probably in a cave somewhere.’”

“Still,” Clara says turning the reader over in her hands. “This is more to go on then I’ve had. The military search turn up anything?”

“A couple places you don’t need to look,” Coulson says. He shows her an updated map.

“Alright,” she says. She scrubs her face. She’s going to take the longest shower of her life once she’s done with this mission. “Nothing to do but keep moving forward. Uh, I don’t know if this is even on the list of things to be concerned about, but I’m finding a lot of terrorists with Stark weapons.” She points to the arsenal she piled up. “Someone should probably look into that.”

“I’ll talk to Miss Potts,” Rhodey says.

“Stark’s PA?” Coulson asks.

“She’s,” Rhodey hesitates, “She’s struggled with Tony’s disappearance, but she’s decided to cope by making sure his company’ll be in order when he gets back. Stane, of course, is trying to push for an increase in weapons production, because more guns are always the solution.”

“I’d like to meet him,” Clara says, “Because I’ve got no guns, and I’m a pretty good solution.”

“Bring Tony back, and I’ll arrange it,” Rhodey promises. “He probably won’t like you.”

Clara shrugs. “Used to that.”

She stays long enough to eat with Rhodey and Coulson and then she starts on her way again. Everywhere she looks is mountains, days and days of hiking stretched out before her, and it’s daunting, makes her wonder what exactly she thinks she’s going to accomplish.

She puts one foot in front of the other and focuses on the immediate future. Looking too far ahead never ends well for her.

~*~

She’s lost track of the days by the time she finally gets a ping from her reader thing. She’s broken up three more Al Qaeda cells and terrorized two more goat herders and eaten more goat than she ever really wanted to by the time she gets her first lead.

The reader pings, and when she tries to check in with Coulson all she gets is static. She’s definitely found some sort of major operation. 

She creeps around the mountain she’s on and on the second day, she finds what looks to be an entrance to a cave. The giant door is a good sign that this is what she’s looking for. 

She finds a place to stash her pack, taking only her bow and her quiver with her as she investigates the best way to get in. There are no obvious protrusions that scream ‘air vent here’ which means she’s going to have to go in the front door. 

Not her favorite method.

Especially when there are hostages involved.

She really wishes she could get in contact with Coulson.

Day 2 of staking out the mountain, she’s woken up by the mountain shaking. 

She plays her favorite game - good sign or bad sign - and finds a perch that one, doesn’t have loose rocks tumbling towards her, and two, has a clear view of the doors. 

She gets hit by a couple falling rocks anyways, shallow cuts, and then the bunker doors slide open. People run out, spooked by something, and Clara starts shooting. They drop and, a little worrying, no one registers their friends falling. People continue to pour out, and Clara has no way to keep up with them all and then  _ something _ bursts out the doors.

She has no idea what the hell it is - some kind of flying robot - but it blasts the people on the ground, and Clara hadn’t killed them but they’re definitely dead now. It turns its blasters on the compound and Clara shoots at it.

Her arrow bounces harmlessly off the metal, but there are openings she can see, and she does have an exploding arrow if she needs it.

The robot looks in her direction and she hides behind her rock. Poking the strange robot probably wasn’t her best idea.

But then the robot decides safety is more important than destruction and flies off. 

Clara collects what arrows weren’t destroyed by the blasts and goes to explore the bunker. She has two theories about the robot. One, Stark invented it to clear the path for his escape. Two, it was some kind of suit and Stark was the robot.

As soon as she gets inside the bunker her comm crackles to life.

“Coulson?” she asks, stepping through the carnage the robot left. She has her bow drawn, is ready in case anyone is left alive, but she’s doubting that’s the case.

“Hawkeye, what’s your status?”

Clara breathes easier with Coulson’s voice in her ear. “I think I’ve found where they were holding Stark. Something escaped, destroying everyone in its path. Could be Stark. Have no verification yet.”

“We’ve spotted an unknown projectile,” Coulson says. “We’ve sent a team to investigate.”

“It looked like a robot,” Clara says. Nothing but dead bodies in this hallway. “The glowing eyes and chest were a little freaky. My arrow bounced off it.”

“You tried to shoot down a flying robot?”

Somehow, when Coulson says ‘flying robot’ it doesn’t sound as ridiculous as when she says it. “It looked like it was going to destroy the compound. I wasn’t sure if Stark was still being kept in here. The arrow was a distraction.”

She gets down into the depths of the compound and she goes still when she pokes her head in one of the rooms. There are two buckets of water sitting on a table, a tray of medical instruments on another. 

“Evidence suggests torture,” she says, leaving the room. This must mean she’s near the cells. 

“Noted,” Coulson says.

She finds what looks like a workshop and she glances over the schematics and materials. None of it makes any sense to her, but she bets it would make sense to Stark. “He was kept here. I found his workshop. No sign of Stark.”

The cells are empty as well, and she combs through the building one last time, finding only one thing out of place.

“I have a body that isn’t Stark, but it doesn’t look Ten Rings, either,” she says. “Scientist-type, I’d guess.”

The man’s face is dirty, his beard scraggly, and his glasses are broken on the ground next to him. He has at least a dozen bullet holes in him. She kneels down next to his body.

“Dead,” she reports.

“Any sign of hostiles in the building?”

“All dead. No sign of Stark.”

“Retrieve the body,” Coulson says. “We have a team on the way to retrieve any useful information.”

“Have you found the robot?”

“Negative.”

Clara hefts the body up, grunting under the weight. She always forgets how heavy dead bodies are. Dead is supposed to mean gone. It’s not supposed to mean her thighs protesting as she carries an entire other person out of the compound. 

She gets the body out of the compound and goes to get her backpack. There’s a scorch mark where it used to be. The walking stick has rolled a few feet down the mountain where it got stuck on a boulder.

“My pack’s been destroyed,” she says. “How far out is help?”

“On its way,” Coulson says. 

Clara bakes in the sun, the body baking next to her, and she comforts herself with the knowledge that she won’t be the worst smelling body to get on the quinjet. It’s not a great comfort, because when the breeze does pick up, all she can smell is blood and it makes her want to throw up. 

Her throat is almost completely dry by the time help comes, and she can barely whisper, “Thank you,” when she’s handed a water bottle.

“Slow sips,” Sorel counsels her. 

She wants to flip him off but that would mean letting go of her bow or letting go of her water bottle so she settles for a glare. She wishes she could shower.

One day, she’s going to fly a quinjet with a shower on it. 

She takes another careful sip of water. She wants to chug the whole thing but knows it’ll just make her sick. She looks over at the body two agents are bringing on the quinjet and wonders who he is. Another captive, probably. Not as lucky as Stark. 

Because the robot had to have been Stark. There was no sign of his body, and if anyone was going to build themselves a rescue robot suit then it would be Tony Stark. 

“Come on,” Hill says, touching Clara’s elbow. “We’re going to get an IV in you.”

Clara grumbles, but Hill ignores her protests and gets her lying down.

“You did good work, Hawkeye,” Hill tells her, as if complimenting her will distract Clara from the fact that someone’s about to shove a needle in her. 

“Did you find him?” Clara whispers. She takes another sip of water.

“Yes,” Hill answers. “No sign of the suit, but Stark’s alive and being debriefed by every agency but ours.”

Clara smiles and lets her head rest on the little pillow every medical bed comes with.

“Good,” she says.

Even though she’s out of the sun, she can still feel the heat radiating off her, like a rock that was too close to a fire. It’s uncomfortable, and she’s adding yet another layer of sweat to the dozens that are already there, but it’s also kind of nice, like a big fluffy blanket wrapped around her.

She means to ask Hill another question, means to say something, but instead she falls asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

She wakes up in medical, IV still in her arm or maybe a different one, and on the television screen, Tony Stark is eating a cheeseburger and telling the world that Stark Industries isn’t going to make weapons anymore.

“Apparently almost being killed by his own weapon then being kidnapped to make the same weapon for terrorists has put him off the weapons business,” Coulson says. 

Clara looks over to see Coulson in the chair next to her bed, a thick folder of paper next to him.

“If that paperwork is for me then I’m calling the nurse for morphine,” she says.

“You were dehydrated,” Coulson says. “You don’t get morphine.”

“I just spent -” she tries to think, then says - “a shitload of time in the desert. Do I really have to do paperwork?”

“Four months,” Coulson tells her. “You spent four months in the desert.”

“No wonder my feet hurt,” Clara says.

Coulson smiles, fond. “Glad you’re feeling better, Barton. If you’re well enough to get out of bed, Fury wants a meeting.”

“Well,” she says, throwing her legs over the bed. “Aren’t I special.”

“You’re not the only one invited. And don’t even think about ripping that IV out. We have nurses for a reason.”

She gets her IV removed and the nurse narrows her eyes and watches as Clara stands up - slowly - and walks to the door - even slower. When Clara doesn’t pass out or collapse in a heap on the ground, Coulson’s allowed to bring her up to Fury’s office.

“Elevators are the best,” Clara says, leaning against the wall as the elevator takes them up. She rolls her eyes at the concern on Coulson’s face. “I’m post-mission tired. Nothing wrong. Natasha still doing her thing?”

“Yes,” Coulson says. 

They don’t say anything else until they get to Fury’s office. It feels a little like last time, Sitwell and Hill there waiting for them. Only, this time they’re sitting around a screen that’s replaying Stark’s ‘no more weapons’ moment and the corresponding plummet in SI stock.

“Glad to see you up and about,” Fury says. “Hill tells me you know Stark was recovered?”

“Yes,” Clara says. “And I saw that he’s decided to rebrand.”

“He has. We need to discuss what to do next. The Ten Rings base was destroyed, but there’s nothing saying they aren’t going to come after him again, and I can list ten people right now who want him dead for the announcement he just made.”

“Are you one of them, sir?”

Clara doesn’t flinch when Fury turns his good eye on her. It’s a valid question. SHIELD uses Stark weapons almost exclusively, and if Stark doesn’t keep producing then they’re in trouble.

“Our lawyers have already set up a meeting with Justin Hammer. Apparently, he’s quite a busy man now that he’s  _ the  _ man in the industry.”

“So you want a protection detail on Stark,” Clara says, getting them back on track. 

The sooner she’s done with this meeting, the sooner she can go and take a shower. Someone cleaned her up while she was sleeping, but being wiped down with baby wipes is not the same as a shower. 

“I do. Until we determine that he’s not in any danger. Whether he makes weapons for us or not, we owe Stark a lot. And his father was a good man.”

“We don’t have anything in place for undercover,” Hill says. “And he’ll be paranoid after what happened. We’re not going to be able to slip anyone in.”

“We shouldn’t be going undercover anyways,” Clara says. “The man was just kidnapped and tortured. For four months. Lying to him isn’t the way to go.”

“What do you suggest?” Fury asks.

“Be straight with him. Tell him you’re assigning however many agents you’re assigning to him. Let him meet them, see them. Make sure they’re visible. Hill’s right, he’s going to be paranoid. Work with him instead of tricking him.”

“Fair point,” Fury says. “Thank you for volunteering to be on the protection detail.”

“Me?” Clara asks. She got back from a four month mission yesterday. She’s barely out of medical. They never let her turn around like this. 

“He needs someone he can trust,” Fury says. “You spent four months looking for him. I’m sure Lt. Colonel Rhodes will put a good word in for you. And we’ll send Agent LaFaille with you. She can pose as his new girlfriend. Stark will know the truth, but the public doesn’t need to. Any other insights, Agent Barton?”

“Madison,” Clara says. “I’m best from a distance, and there will be places Stark’s girlfriend can’t go. No one will be surprised by Stark picking up more security following the incident and Madison and I complement each other. She’s better up close.”

“Sitwell, put together a team of five including those three. Hill, get Rhodes on the phone and get him to agree with this plan. Coulson, find someone at SI who’ll sign off on extra security. Tell them they won’t even have to pay for it if you have to. And Barton? Go shower. You smell like goat shit.”

“Smell like worse than that,” she says but she’s grateful for the dismissal. 

~*~

It’s Pepper Potts who signs off on the protection detail, agreeing to pay half, but puts her foot down on the fake girlfriend. So it’s Clara, Madison, Sorel, and Patel who get assigned the Stark detail, and it’s Clara who gets to be the first to talk to Stark.

Madison is with Pepper on a tour of the California headquarters, Patel and Sorel are touring the Malibu residence and setting up what equipment they need, which means Clara gets to go say hi to their ward.

She’s worked missions where Stark was there before, and she’s seen him on TV, but she hasn’t seen him in person since she was 17. They’ve both aged a lot since then. There’s a stiffness to his walk that is certainly partly due to his recent experiences, but is also due to age.

He purposefully keeps his back to her, mixing a drink at the bar when she comes into the room. She wonders what he’s trying to prove and to who by doing this. His shoulders are almost to his ears, his entire body tense with his back to an unknown person.

“I won’t make weapons for you,” he says. “So you can go back to Fury and tell him to go to hell.”

“That’s not why we’re here,” Clara says.

Stark turns around, too full glass in his hand, and his gaze fixes on her, and she can see him struggling to figure out where he knows her from.

“Your safety is our priority,” she says.

He laughs. “Maybe when I was useful to you. I’ve made some adjustments to SI. Even if I die, there’s still a fund that goes to SHIELD. You don’t need me to get my money.”

“You’re more than just your weapons,” Clara tells him, “and you’re more than just what you can do for other people.”

He gives her a sarcastic smile and tip of his glass before knocking half of it back.

“But really, none of that matters,” Clara says and  _ that  _ gets his attention. “Because my orders are to make sure you don’t die and since you don’t give my orders, I don’t care whether or not you like them.”

“It’s my mansion,” Stark says, “With my AI. And I’m a billionaire. I can make your life hell.”

“Hell was tracking your ass through Afghanistan,” Clara says. “At least, it was hot enough I figure it must have been hell.”

That stops Stark before he can finish his drink. “You were looking for me? Rhodey said someone was, but…”

He trails off and Clara rolls her eyes. “Too small? Too young? Too female? Which is it? Promise you won’t offend me, I’ve heard it all before.”

“Offending people is what I’m best at,” Stark says. “You know, now that I’m not coming up with new ways to kill them.”

He finishes his glass and pours another one.

Clara’s read the file, hell she’s seen the TV, she knows that Stark is an alcoholic. She knows it’s only going to get worse, because it’s his crutch and he needs to feel stable now more than ever. She just doesn’t know how she’s going to deal with it.

She takes a deep breath. She’s a trained SHIELD agent. Stark is a middle-aged man recovering from four months of torture. He won’t hurt her. He can’t. Her hands still tremble, to the point where she has to clasp them behind her back.

“Your AI,” Clara says, because there are some things they need to talk about before he can’t talk anymore. Before she can’t be in the same room as him.

“Jarvis,” Stark says. “What about him?”

“I’d like permission to patch it - him - into our comms.”

Stark’s immediately suspicious. “Why?”

“Because he’s everywhere. Because the more help we can get, the better.”

“You can,” Stark says. “No one else.”

It’s better than nothing. 

“Let me see your comm,” he says.

Clara takes it out and brings it over, stands at attention after she puts it in his hand, because it’s the only way to keep herself still, the only way to keep herself from flinching or running at the smell of scotch on his breath. 

Her dad was a whiskey person, and he drank far cheaper shit than Stark does, but there’s something about the scent of booze that takes her right back to the trailer and the first time she realized that whatever her dad was drinking made him mean.

“I make you uncomfortable,” Stark says, fiddling with the ear piece. “Have I fucked you? Is that why you look familiar?”

“No,” Clara says. 

“Huh.” Stark does a few more things and then hands the earpiece back. “Jarvis, patch Agent, uh, which one are you?”

“Hawkeye,” she says, putting the earpiece back.

“Patch Hawkeye,” he makes a face, “into your system.”

“Syncing to auditory device,” Jarvis says. “Tablet as well?”

“Yes, please,” Clara says. “We’ll discuss alerts later if you have the time.”

“Of course, Miss Hawkeye.”

It’s Clara’s turn to make a face. “Just Hawkeye is fine.”

“Of course, Hawkeye,” Jarvis corrects.

That taken care of, Clara takes a couple steps away from Stark, breathing easier once she’s out of arm’s reach. 

Stark narrows his eyes. “It’s really not a sex thing?”

“Have a good afternoon,” Clara tells him. “If you need anything your - Jarvis can now contact me.”

He waves her off and she leaves, pausing once in the doorway to look back. He’s given up on the glass and is drinking straight out of the bottle. 

She hurries towards the suite they’ve been given for their stay. All four of them are sharing a two bedroom suite that comes complete with a bathroom, kitchen, and bar of its own. Clara doesn’t mind sharing a room with Madison, even if she thinks Starks wants them to mind, wants them to know that even though they could each have their own suite, he’s making them share because he doesn’t want them here.

It’s still the nicest bed she’s ever slept on and the best shower she’s seen in her life. 

Besides, there’s a pool.

She’s definitely going to swim a few laps every morning before she gets on shift. 

For now, though, she takes advantage of being the only one in the suite to check-in with Jarvis.

“Jarvis, how sophisticated are you?” she asks.

She doesn’t know how she can tell, but the AI  _ hesitates _ . She wonders if Stark programmed some of his own paranoia in to the thing.

“Can you perform multiple tasks at once?” Clara rephrases.

“Yes, Hawkeye.”

“So if I find the most vulnerable points of the mansion, you can keep an eye on them for me and alert me of any movement?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Thank you.” It’s weird talking to basically the voice of the house, but she’s seen weirder things. She rubs at the scar on her hand, leftover from her trip to the Amazon. “And you can stream surveillance to my tablet?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything you can’t do?” Clara asks, then, immediately, “You don’t have to answer that. Just thinking out loud.”

“Sir does that,” Jarvis tells her. “I have grown adept at differentiating between questions directed at myself and questions directed at yourself.”

“You’ve got quite the vocabulary,” Clara says.

“I was created by Tony Stark.”

“Point.” Clara stretches out on the bed and looks down at her tablet. It’s divided into four quadrants. The top left is Stark, still at his bar. The other three are the main entrances to the building. She’ll have to do her own scouting soon. For now, “Did you miss Stark while he was gone?”

There’s a long silence, long enough that Clara thinks she’s found another question she wasn’t supposed to ask.

“It was quiet without Sir,” Jarvis finally says.

Clara thinks it’s a yes. It figures that someone who could build a robot suit out of scraps while being occasionally tortured could also design an AI with feelings. Clara decides to keep that tidbit to herself. If she was smart enough to do it, she would’ve designed herself a friend a long time ago.

~*~

“So,” Madison says, when they’re getting ready for bed. “Is this the dream assignment for you or what?”

“Or what,” Clara says. 

Out in the living room, Sorel and Patel are playing rock, paper, scissors to see who gets the couch and who gets the bed. Clara and Madison are just sharing. She’s never understood why the male agents are weird about it. The beds are big enough for two people and even if they weren’t, Clara’s slept on enough floors and hard ground and rocks that if there’s a bed, she’s sleeping in it.

“I know you still have a poster of Stark on your wall,” Madison says.

“Because I never took it down. It makes me laugh whenever I see it, thinking about how pissed Coulson would be. This is just a mission.”

Madison gives her a look that says she doesn’t believe her for a second.

“Well, maybe I’m taking it as my due,” Clara says, getting into bed and sighing as the mattress cradles her. “I spent four months in the desert. This is basically a vacation. But I’m getting paid.”

“You’re babysitting an ego driven billionaire.”

“Tomato. Tomahto.” Clara closes her eyes. “If you keep me up talking, I will stab you with one of my arrows. Non-lethally, of course.”

“Trick you learned from the Black Widow?” 

“Nah, she’d just choke you until you passed out.”

“I don’t actually think you’re joking,” Madison says.

It’s because Clara’s not.

They both go to sleep quickly after that.

~*~

It becomes very clear to Clara after only a few days that if they don’t step in, Stark’s going to kill himself. It’ll be slow, a mixture of alcohol and starvation, but the man isn’t well. Clara suspects that he had problems before Afghanistan, but what happened to him there only made it worse.

She also suspects that he won’t take well to anyone bringing it up, so she schedules a lunch meeting with Pepper Potts and brings two salads topped with steak.

Pepper eyes her then the salad. “My schedule didn’t say anything about agents,” she says. She frowns. “Jarvis?”

“We’re buds,” Clara says. She gives Pepper the bigger salad. One, she’s working harder. Two, Clara’s probably going to stop for a snow cone on the way back from the office. Malibu is far superior to other cities for many reasons, but one of them is that in addition to taco carts and hot dog stands they also have trucks that sell ice cream.

“Hmm,” Pepper says, not impressed. She does take the salad.

“I want to talk about your boss,” Clara says.

Pepper closes off even more. “Do you?”

Clara imagines that the woman can become a wall, and it’s not a subtle maneuver, but it’s probably a damn effective one. 

“His diet is awful,” Clara says.

_ That _ shocks Pepper, enough that she stops carefully drizzling dressing on her salad. “You’re assigned to protect him. The babysitting jokes are insulting but they’re jokes.”

“The way I see it,” Clara says, “Protecting him includes protecting him from himself. He’s an alcoholic and his diet is for shit.” She winces. “Uh, sorry, ma’am.”

Clara doesn’t spend much time with women who aren’t SHIELD agents. She’s pretty sure you’re supposed to be polite and shit. She’s not great at polite.

“It’s Pepper,” the woman says. “And I’ve been Tony Stark’s PA long enough that nothing you can say will offend me.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” Clara says. “Anyways, he needs help.”

“And you want to provide it?”

“Hell no,” Clara says. “He doesn’t trust us, and I don’t blame him. But he trusts you.”

“I’m also not his babysitter,” Pepper says.

“No, but you care about him.”

Pepper blushes, an interesting reaction, but not what Clara’s focused on right now.

“SHIELD is concerned with external threats on his life. I’m worried about internal ones. Also, the quality of the life he’s living.”

Pepper puts her salad aside so she can lean forward. “And why should I believe that you have Mr. Stark’s best interests in mind?”

Clara matches her, leaning forward as well. “Because I know what it’s like to be confronted with the fact that your life isn’t what you thought it was. Because when it happened to me, I was young enough that I managed to recover more or less on my own. He’s going to need help or he isn’t going to recover.”

“I’ll help so long as I think you’re doing the right thing,” she finally says. 

“Good,” Clara says. That’s all she wanted. She gives Pepper the second salad. “You need it more than me. I heard you’ve been picking up a lot of the workload at SI.”

“That’s Mr. Stane,” Pepper says but Clara’s been working with Natasha Romanov for going on five years. She knows demure deflection when she sees it.

“Sure,” Clara says. 

She still leaves the salad.

~*~

She eats her snow cone on the way back to the mansion and stops at a local pizzeria to bring two pizzas back with her. 

Madison and Patel should be on their shifts right now, and either Sorel will want some pizza or Clara will have leftovers to put in the fridge. 

She’s making her way to her suite when Stark’s voice makes her stop.

“Agent Clara Barton,” he says.

Clara turns to see him in the same t-shirt as yesterday and the dark rings under his eyes even more pronounced.

“Yes?” she asks.

“Codename: Hawkeye,” he continues. He sways a little like he’s been drinking. “I met you at SHIELD.”

“Almost ten years ago,” Clara says. 

He looks at the pizza boxes. “Still your favorite?”

Clara smiles. “Some things don’t change. Are you hungry?”

“Not for your little friends?”

“They’re all fully trained agents capable of getting their own pizza. Besides, I don’t share with just anyone.”

“But you’ll share with me,” he says. 

“You’re sharing your house,” she says.

“Not the same level,” he says.

She takes the pizza into the kitchen. He’ll join her or he won’t. 

She’s looking for plates when he wanders in. He lifts the first lid. “Cheese? Boring.”

“Impossible. Pizza can’t be boring. Second one is mushroom and pepperoni.”

“Weird.”

She gets herself a slice of each and sits down to eat. 

Stark looks at the pizza and then goes over to the fridge and gets a few things out. She’s done with her first slice by the time Stark’s finished making himself a smoothie. 

“I was so excited to be back in America,” Stark says, sitting at the table with her. “All I wanted was a burger.”

“You ate it on screen,” Clara says. She remembers seeing it while she was in medical.

“They didn’t show it coming back up,” Stark says. “Turns out that much grease wasn’t good for me after what happened.”

Clara’s been there before. It’s not pleasant. “You’ll get there,” she promises. “Pizza’s not out of your diet forever.”

“You know this from experience?”

She gives him a ‘you’re supposed to be a genius’ look and starts on her next slice. She starts by peeling each piece of pepperoni off. She likes the crunchy ones best.

“Why’d you tell me your name was Hawkeye?” he asks.

“I’m on a mission. It’s my mission name.”

“I didn’t know you as Hawkeye.”

“No. You probably knew me as the pain in the ass teenager.”

“Curious,” Stark says, “and naive. Not a pain in the ass. SHIELD crush all your dreams yet?”

She peels the last pepperoni off and pops it in her mouth instead of answering.

“You told me SHIELD wasn’t going to make you kill anyone,” he says. “That promise hold true after ten years?”

Clara puts her slice of pizza back in the box. “It’s always my choice,” she says. She stacks her boxes and walks out, leaving him to drink his smoothie alone.

She doesn’t know how she forgot that Tony Stark is an asshole.


	8. Chapter 8

Clara doesn’t know why not putting up with Stark’s shit put her on his hate list, but for some reason he decides he’s only having sex when she’s got night watch duty.

“Again?” Madison asks, coming into the kitchen to see Clara biting the heads off gummy bears one at a time. The bodies she leaves in a pile to eat later. “TMZ would be so jealous right now.”

“I don’t see why this is an important part of our jobs,” Clara says. She looks down at her tablet, at the, admittedly, gorgeous brunette that’s - well, she’s very naked. Stark, surprisingly, is not. Or maybe not surprising. Maybe all billionaires have sex with their shirts on. 

Maybe it’s leftover from what happened in Afghanistan.

They know he’s got a glowing power source in his chest. He won’t tell them why he has it. Clara has a few guesses, none of them good. If she was Stark, she wouldn’t let anyone in her bed. Of course, as herself she doesn’t really let anyone in her bed.

She bites the head off another gummy bear.

“It’s a vulnerable place to be,” Madison says, “and everyone knows Stark has a weakness for models. It’s how I’d get an assassin in.”

Clara goes back to the footage. It doesn’t look like she’s trying to kill Stark. She’s definitely not hiding any weapons anywhere. She is, however - huh.

Clara doesn’t think she’d let someone pin her hands the way the woman’s pinning Stark’s.

From the look on his face, he doesn’t mind it. 

“I never needed to know what Stark’s sex face looked like,” Clara says.

“Ruining your fantasies?” Madison asks. 

She reaches for a gummy and Clara pulls the bag closer to her.

“You’re a terrible sharer,” Madison says. 

“You can have a body,” Clara says.

Madison wrinkles her nose. 

Clara gives her an orange gummy. She’s feeling kind. 

That’s when her tablet starts beeping at her, and she’s on her feet and running towards Stark’s room before Madison can ask what’s wrong. She bursts into the room, Jarvis obligingly unlocking it for her and gets her gun up.

A bow is impractical indoors, and the gun tends to pack more visual punch.

Like in this case.

The woman Stark was in bed with is now on the floor and when she sees Clara pointing a gun at her, her shock quickly becomes vocal.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demands.

Stark is on the bed, face paler than Clara would like it. His hands are keeping his shirt firmly pulled down.

“I think she’s talking to you,” Clara says, gun and attention still trained on the woman.

“We don’t have time for everything that’s wrong with me,” Stark says. “Your list should be shorter.”

Clearly, Stark is going to be no help. Clara turns to the woman and puts what she hopes is a friendly smile on her face. “Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to get dressed.”

“Are you going to point that gun somewhere else?”

Clara’s smile is decidedly less friendly. “No.”

“I’m selling this story to the first person who offers,” the woman says.

Tony shrugs. “Won’t be the worst thing published about me.”

She huffs and throws her clothes on, giving Clara a nasty look as she leaves. Clara tries not to smile when the woman shrieks, having run into probably Patel in the hallway.

“I’ll escort you out,” Patel says, mild like he’s been taking lessons from Coulson.

“I know the way,” the woman says.

“Non-negotiable.”

Clara pushes the door shut, ending what they can hear of the conversation. She turns her attention back to Tony. He’s still made no move to cover up his bottom half. 

“You didn’t need to come in guns blazing,” he says. 

“You were in distress,” she says.

He smirks, but it’s a shadow of its usual self. “Safewords exist for a reason.”

Clara does not get paid enough for this. 

“Jarvis?” she asks, resisting the urge to look up at the ceiling. 

“I am here.”

“Would you evaluate Stark’s intelligence high enough to design a set of cuffs that you control?”

“What?” Stark asks.

“I would, Hawkeye.”

“And, upon hearing a previously agreed upon spoken word, could you release these cuffs?”

“I could.”

Clara turns to Tony. “No more sex until you design them.”

Tony’s gaping at her. “Are you enabling my trust issues?”

“You want to have sex,” Clara says. “You want to have what some would deem dangerous sex, and I would call incredibly stupid, but it’s your body, your choice. However, since there seems to be something special about that glowy thing in your chest you refuse to talk about and refuse to let anyone touch, you should make sure no one’s going to touch it after they’ve got you tied up. That is what your freakout was about, wasn’t it?”

Stark is stubbornly, tellingly, silent. 

“I was on watch,” she reminds him. She holds up the tablet. “I saw it.”

“It quiets my head,” Stark says. He get off the bed to rummage through his drawers until he can pull on a pair of sweatpants. “After everything that happened - sometimes I just need it to be quiet up here.” He taps his forehead. “Downside of being a genius.”

“I’m not telling you to stop,” Clara says, “I’m telling you to be safer about it. And to stop only having sex on nights that I’m on night duty.”

That gets a genuine Tony Stark grin out of him. “Notice that, did you?”

~*~

Stark is theoretically on leave from his company so he can recover from a traumatic experience, but he does regularly have meetings with Pepper or Stane at the mansion. The rest of the time, he holes himself up in his workshop, working on something.

Jarvis won’t give anyone access to the cameras in the workshop, so Clara takes to guarding the workshop door and hoping there aren’t any other good ways to get in.

“I still think you’re wasting your time,” Stark says one afternoon.

He’s poking at a smoothie with a straw - Clara makes sure he eats at least one solid meal a day. Clara’s sitting on the island counter, her own smoothie in hand. 

“We haven’t confirmed that the Ten Rings cell that came after you is gone,” Clara says. “Until we do that, we stay.”

“I’m not in any danger. Obie, tell them I’m not in any danger.”

Stane, Clara’s least favorite of the people Stark surrounds himself with, looks over his shoulder. He’s standing by the full length window, looking out at the ocean. He dismisses Clara with a single look.

“He’s not in any danger. SHIELD is wasting its time and resources.”

“See,” Stark says.

“I don’t report to Obadiah Stane,” Clara says. 

“Tony won’t make you weapons,” Stane says, “No matter how long you hover over his shoulder.”

“Good thing we’re not here trying to wring weapons out of him,” Clara says. “Personally, I’m much more interested in what Stark Industries is doing with regards to prosthetics. One of our agents recently lost a hand on a mission and is on the list for a Stark prototype. We can get our R&D or Hammer Tech to make weapons. Tony’s much more than that.”

Stark looks up from his smoothie, surprised. “You called me by my first name.”

“A slip of the tongue.”

“Nah,” Tony says, grinning. “You like me. Admit it. My personality is pretty stellar.”

Stane is frowning, like he doesn’t like seeing Clara and Tony getting along. Clara isn’t all that surprised when Stane brings Tony a glass of scotch. 

“You,” Tony says, taking the glass, “are perfect. Have I told you that recently?”

Stane puts his hand on Tony’s shoulders and smiles as Tony pushes his smoothie aside in favor of the scotch. When Stane meets Clara’s gaze, challenging, Clara doesn’t say anything.

She doesn’t look away, either.

~*~

Clara’s sitting outside the workshop one night, tapping her knife on her knee, wondering how Natasha’s doing when the door opens abruptly. She’s on her feet, knife in hand in an instant, but it’s just Tony, face haunted, hair sticking up in every direction like he’s been running his hands through it constantly. 

He’s dragging his hand down his face, and he pauses when he sees her standing across from the door. He looks at her then at the knife and sighs.

“You going to stab me?”

“No.” She puts the knife back.

“Good,” he says. “I need to take a piss.”

He continues down the hall, and Clara stays where she is even though the door to the workshop is open and she’s curious. Tony clearly doesn’t want anyone knowing what he’s working on, and she meant it when she told Fury that they shouldn't betray Tony’s trust. 

Instead, she forces herself to relax against the wall. She wonders if she can force Tony to take a break for a nap or maybe even a sandwich when he gets back.

She goes on high alert again when something else comes out of the workshop. It looks like a trashcan on wheels, one of the ones where you step on the bottom and the lid opens, only there’s nothing to step on. Also, she thinks it might be a robot so she wouldn’t step on it anyway.

It wheels right up to her and nudges her knee.

“Hi,” she says.

It makes a series of clicks and clacks that might be an attempt to communicate. 

“Oh,” Tony says when he comes back. “You’ve met Pop-Pop.”

“Pop-Pop?” Clara echoes.

The lid pops open and Clara  _ does not _ startle. 

“Huh,” Clara says.

Tony grins. “Robotic trash can. Pretty useful. I never miss when I throw balled up paper. I wonder if I could invent basketball hoops that moved towards the ball.”

“I think that would ruin the whole talent and athletic ability part of the sport.”

Tony shrugs. “Do you really just sit outside my door?”

“Yes.”

“My workshop is the safest place I could be.”

“I take my job seriously,” she says.

“You don’t like Obie.”

She wonders how long he’s been sitting on this observation, wonders if she should agree then put an end to the conversation. There’s no way it can end well, and she was actually making progress with Tony.

“I don’t,” she says.

“It’s weird,” Tony says, “because he’s been looking out for me since my parents died. I figured you two would be best buds or something. But you get all scowly when he’s around, and I don’t think he’s touched my shoulder this much since - since my parents’ funeral. I’m still waiting for him to say ‘son’ like he did that one time, my first week as the only living Stark.”

“Only once?” Clara asks.

“Punched him in the face. It wasn’t a very good punch. It probably hurt me more than him. But he didn’t call me son again. But, you’re trying to distract me. We’re talking about you.”

“Were we?” Clara asks.

“Come on,” Tony says, going into his workshop. “I’m done working for the night.”

“Do I need to give you five minutes to hide whatever it is you’re working on?” she asks, even as she pushes off the wall.

“Already hidden,” he says. “You’re really not worried about it?”

Clara shrugs. “My job is to protect you, not discover SI secrets.”

The workshop is what she’d expect, long tables covered in diagrams, books, the occasional pencil or screwdriver. There are a couple machines she’s never seen before, and when Pop-Pop wheels by them they whir. She wonders if they’re not machines but more robots.

If she had the smarts to make robots - well, no point in dreaming of things that won’t ever happen. She goes over to a beat up couch that has a tarp draped over the back like some kind of blanket. 

Tony follows her gaze, his shoulders drawing up. “You judging me?”

“I’ve slept worse places,” she says. “I’m just glad you’re sleeping.”

“You’re not like my usual babysitters,” Tony says.

“Still not your babysitter.”

She sits down on the couch and stretches out, raising an eyebrow when he frowns at her. If he wants to sit on the couch then he’s going to have to fight her for it. He sits down on one of his rolly stools. 

“So,” he says. “Why don’t you like Obie?”

“MIT,” she says. Her knife is back in her boot and she folds her hands behind her head. “You gave a speech there.”

“I’ve given a lot of speeches there.”

“We were there as low key back-up for one of them,” Clara says. “You were giving a speech about engineering. You were telling the kids what they could do with their degrees, prosthetics or building bridges and -”

This is stupid. She doesn’t know why she’s telling him this.

“And what?” Tony demands. “You’re going to fade before the good part?”

“And then Stane put his hand on your shoulder,” Clara says, “and your entire face fell and you started talking about weapons.”

“And that’s why you don’t like him?” Tony laughs. “Weapons are - were - my job. Prosthetics for vets make for a good story, but it’s not how you make money.”

His mask is back on, cocky, unlikeable, but Clara doesn’t let it sway her. She knows all about putting on a front, about using different faces for different people. She works closely with the Black Widow. Tony’s not going to fool her. 

“I’m not trying to make you hate him,” Clara says, because Tony’s clearly getting defensive. “I’m just telling you why I don’t like him.”

“Because he reminded me to do my job?”

“You’re being difficult,” Clara says. “You asked me a question and I answered.”

They both go quiet, neither wanting this to escalate into a full blown argument. Well, Clara doesn’t. She’s not sure why Tony finally shuts up.

She doesn’t know what makes her break the quiet either. All she knows is she’s lying there, eyes closed, hands behind her head when she says, “You tried to warn me off SHIELD.”

She can hear him sit up straighter. She doesn’t open her eyes or turn her head towards him.

“I remember,” she says. “You told me SHIELD probably hadn’t had to do much to make it seem like the best thing I’d ever seen. You were right. They’re not  _ bad _ . Obviously, I still work for them. But my eyes have opened since then.”

“So what, you think I should believe your feelings about Obie?”

“Nah. Just saying, you’ve got good instincts.”

She’s planning on rolling off the couch and going back upstairs. Tony said he’s done in his workshop, and she doesn’t really want to keep talking. But maybe her confession loosened something, or he’s been holding it in for way too long, because before she can move he says, “Not really.”

She relaxes into the couch, makes herself seem as small and non-threatening as possible. If he forgets she’s here, maybe he’ll keep talking.

“If I had good instincts, I would’ve known my Humvee was going to explode. The kids in that car with me - and they were kids, fuck the government for making  _ kids _ fight our wars - they had no idea it was coming. I had no idea it was coming. One minute it’s stupid poses for a picture so they can tell all their friends they met Tony Stark and then - boom. No more picture. No more kids.”

Tony’s voice is rough, like the words are being ground out of him. “And then there was Yinsen. He was already there when they brought me in. He saved my life. And when I got out, he distracted the guards. Two times he saved my life, and he died for it. You know why I really hate bodyguards? Why I wish I could tell Fury to go fuck himself and send you back to your base? Why should someone else die for me? I’m not that important.”

“Is that why you stopped making weapons?” Clara asks. “Thought if you took away the most important part of you nobody would bother? Because you’re wrong. You still have Pepper, you still have Rhodey, and you still have us. I’d die for you because you  _ are _ more important than me. Anyone can shoot a bow or a gun with a little practice. Genius takes a hell of a lot more than practice.”

“That was a shitty pep talk,” Stark tells her.

She cracks open an eye and smiles at him. “I don’t pay attention in therapy. Maybe if I did I could tell you something uplifting.”

“You’re in therapy?”

“SHIELD mandated,” she says. “You probably should be. I’m sure you’ve got enough PTSD and survivor’s guilt to fund someone’s second yacht.”

“Vacation home, more likely,” he says.

He laughs a little.

“Yinsen was in the compound with you?” she asks.

“I’m not talking out my feelings,” he says.

“Bald man?” she asks. “Beard? Glasses?”

Stark’s gaze looks like it’s trying to punch through her. “How’d you know that?”

“Told you, I looked for you in the desert. Found you, too. Just a little too late. You blasted out of the joint. I didn’t realize it was you at first. When I did a sweep of the compound, I found someone who didn’t belong. Coulson told me to bring him out. Figured he deserved a proper burial.”

“I gave him one,” Tony says. “It was the least I could do. Set up a memorial fund in his name. That’s all I’ve really got to contribute, money. You were really there?”

“I shot you with an arrow,” Clara says. “You were going to blow up the compound. I didn’t realize the robot was you. I wanted to stop you.”

“That was  _ you _ ? I almost killed you.”

“I was hoping to pester you and distract you.” She grins. “I succeeded. You blew up my pack, though. Luckily, Coulson got to me. Though, I probably could’ve raided the compound if I needed to.”

“You were in the compound?” Stark asks, quieter now. “Does that mean there’s a SHIELD file somewhere with your speculation on what happened to me?”

“Yeah. Didn’t look like it was a fun time.”

“It wasn’t.”

“If you want to talk about it my report’s already in. I won’t edit it.”

“And if I don’t want to talk about it?”

Clara shrugs. “You think there’s a place that’ll deliver pizza to your mansion at fuck o’clock in the morning?”

“Pizza solves all problems?” Tony guesses.

“See, you are a genius.”

She flashes him a smile and he shakes his head as he tugs his phone out of his pocket.

~*~

Stark becomes Tony, and they don’t talk about Obadiah again, but Tony stops trying to actively annoy her.

Most of the time.

Some of the time.

She’s doing laps in the pool, enjoying being in the water, enjoying feeling her body  _ work _ , when a pool noodle hits her in the head. 

She stops swimming and looks over at Tony, the man grinning at the edge of the pool.

“I’m off duty,” she says. “Go bother someone else.”

“Madison and Pepper are getting manicures which is boring.”

“Translation: you’re hurt they didn’t invite you.”

Tony grins. “The Patel kid is watching surveillance of the garage under pretense of security but really I think he’s got a hard on for my Ferrari. And the Sorel guy is doing something. He’s boring.”

“Well,” Clara says. “None of that  changes the fact that I’m off duty and therefore not required to entertain you.”

She doesn’t say ‘you look like you’re sleeping’ or ‘you no longer look like death warmed over’ even though both things are true. He’s been spending more time with Pepper lately, and she thinks in addition to eating better, Pepper’s pestered him about some non-weapon inventions. Busy is good for him. Busy means no thinking.

It’s why Clara’s spending her morning at the pool. Exercise helps clear her mind. 

Tony reaches for another pool noodle.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” she tells him but swims over to the edge of the pool to hoist herself out.

Water drips off her onto the roof - being a billionaire comes with perks like a rooftop pool - and she can see Tony looking her over, not with any kind of interest, just curiosity about her various scars. 

She holds a hand out for a towel. 

“What do you want from me?” she asks.

He hands the towel over, the material moving in the breeze and then -

An arrow passes through it, skittering against the wet bar.

Clara doesn’t think. She grabs Tony and they dive behind the bar, the only kind of cover on the roof. Her comm is with her cover-up on the side of the pool.

“Jarvis,” she says, “I need you to put the mansion on high alert. And contact Coulson.”

Tony is underneath her, eyes wide, a little unfocused. 

“Hey,” she says, sharp, punctuating the word with a light slap to his cheek. “Stay with me.”

The water from her suit is soaking through his t-shirt, and she gets her breathing under control, tries to listen for any sounds of movement. Whoever attacked them will have to move before they can get a shot behind the bar. Clara wants to be off the roof before they move. 

“I’m here,” Tony grumbles.

“Yeah?” she asks. “You always check out when you’ve got a girl in a swimsuit on you? I thought you were a ladies man or something.”

“Maybe you’re just not my type,” Tony says.

“I thought your type was willing.”

“It is,” he says, unashamed, “but you’re not interested. I’ve got the reputation I have because I know when people are interested in me and when they’re not.”

“I have a poster of you on my wall.”

Clara can feel the press of the arc reactor against her chest, they’re that close. She doesn’t know what it does, but she hopes it won’t stop working if it gets wet. 

Tony’s eyes narrow. “Is that true or are you trying to distract me from that fact that you almost died?”

“I didn’t almost die,” Clara says.

“Did I almost die?”

“No,” Clara says. “Can your glowy thing get wet?”

“It’s called an arc reactor,” he huffs.

She grins. “Sorry. I’m the stupid one here.”

“You’re not stupid,” he says. 

“You’re just saying that because I’m acting as a human body shield for you right now.”

“We’ve already discussed that I think you risking your life for me is stupid.”

“Hawkeye?” It’s Patel’s voice, coming from the other side of the bar.

“All clear?” she asks.

“All clear. Coulson’s called a meeting.”

Clara pushes off Stark’s chest and gets to her feet before giving him a hand up. “I’m going to change, but I’ll meet you there. Patel, make sure you get the arrow. Coulson’ll want to take a look at it.”

“Another archer?” Tony asks. “I thought arrows were  _ your _ calling card.”

Clara doesn’t look at the arrow as Patel picks it up. She doesn’t dare, doesn’t want confirmation of what she thinks. 

“I only know one other person who uses them,” she says. 

She snatches the towel from where it had dropped to the ground and goes to her room to get changed. 

When she meets the others in the kitchen, all the windows have gone dark.

“They’re all bulletproof,” Tony explains when she comes in, “but figured we shouldn’t give anyone a look in anyway.”

Patel, Sorel, and Coulson are all at the table with Tony, and Clara’s eyes skirt away from the arrow in Coulson’s hands.

“Hostile was aiming for me, sir,” she says. “I apologize for bringing additional danger to the mission.”

“Aiming for you?” Tony asks. He looks from her to Coulson, then back to her. “What are you talking about?”

Coulson sets the arrow down on the table. “This arrow was fired by Charles Barton. Effective immediately, there’s a shoot on sight order. I’ve uploaded pictures to your tablets.”

“Barton?” Tony echoes. Clara can feel everyone at the table staring at her.

“Brother,” Clara answers because there’s no avoiding it.

“Agent here puts a hit out on your brother, and you don’t have anything to say about that?”

“He’s clearly picked up a contract on me,” Clara says, “Maybe on you. Either way, someone knows I’m on your security detail, and they want me distracted. It won’t work.”

“He’s your brother!” Tony says as if he didn’t just find this information out.

“He shot at me,” she says.

“He missed!”

Clara bares her teeth in a smile. “He’s not as good as me.”

“We’re going to have to discuss additional security measures,” Coulson says.

“Yes,” Tony says. “You should put Barton somewhere safe.”

“Additional security measures for  _ you _ ,” Coulson clarifies.

Tony’s mouth falls open. He looks around the table for someone to take his side, but this isn’t a board room. This is a table of highly trained agents. They’re here to keep him safe. They’re not going to get distracted by Barney. That’s what whoever hired him wanted.

“Your brother just tried to kill you,” Tony says. “Why are you worried about me?”

“If I’m going to be a distraction, I can remove myself from the detail,” Clara says. “I’ll work the mission from the other side.”

Can she hunt down Barney? She’s not sure. If Coulson tells her to, maybe. If he doesn’t, she’s not sure about this shoot on sight order. Not that she would tell Tony that. Or Coulson for that matter. She supposes she has tranq arrows for a reason. She can take him out without killing him. 

“Why now?” Madison asks. She’s still looking at the arrow. “We’ve been guarding Stark for over a month. Why the sudden move?”

“A distraction,” Clara says. “Someone found Barney for a reason. They -”

“Barney?” Tony interrupts.

Clara flushes and then hates herself for it. “It’s what I call him. It doesn’t matter. He was picked for a reason. They wanted us focused on him or me off my game or something. It took them a month to track him down. Something major is going to happen, and we have to keep our guard up. Someone’s going to move against Stark or SI or  _ something _ and they don’t want us at our best because we’ll figure it out.”

She’s rubbing her leg, the scar he gave her last time she saw him, and she forces herself to stop as soon as she realizes she’s doing it. Fuck. She wishes Natasha was here. Natasha would know how to ground her, how to focus her, how to help her see beyond this, see the big picture. 

Something is happening. Something she was getting too close to? Something involving what Stark is doing in his workshop? It’s right there, she just can’t see it.

She’s too close.

That’s it.

She sees better from a distance, and Barney’s brought everything crashing back home.

“Barton?” 

Clara looks up, and from the stares she’s getting, Coulson’s been calling her name for a while now.

“It’s Hawkeye,” she says. 

“No,” Tony says. He’s pointing at her. “This isn’t healthy. Speaking as a man who is very unhealthy, this is not okay.”

“I’m armed with paralytic arrows,” Clara says. “Shoot on sight isn’t the same as kill on sight.”

“As long as you’re the one who sees him. And I’m guessing shooting your brother will be pretty traumatic whether you kill him or just injure him.”

Clara looks over at Coulson, pleading with her eyes. “Permission to start new perimeter design and new guard rotation, sir?”

“Permission granted,” Coulson says.

Tony’s still arguing when she leaves, going straight down to her room so she can shower. The chlorine from the pool has dried out her skin, and she doesn’t like the feel of it in her hair. Besides, no one’s going to try and bother her while she’s in the shower. 

When she gets out of the shower, Madison is sitting on their bed.

Whatever Maddie has to say, Clara has the feeling she’s going to need to be clothed for it. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even acknowledge that Maddie’s there until she’s in a pair of shorts and a SHIELD t-shirt.

“Here to help me adjust our patrol route?” Clara asks.

“Here to help you with something,” Maddie says. “No one with think less of you if you pull out of this.”

“I will,” Clara says. 

She sprawls out on her stomach, tablet in hand. She means to open up the mansion blueprints, but instead Coulson’s alert on Barney pops up, his full name, his picture. It’s a recent picture, or, he looks older than the last time she saw him, which means SHIELD’s known his whereabouts.

She supposes she never asked what happened to him after the vault mission. She’d been so caught up in Trick and herself that she’d forgotten about her brother.

And now he’s popped up again, and, once again, they’re on the opposite side of things.

“I left him,” Clara says. “When he ran away from home, he took me with him. He was my older brother, he thought it was his job to look after me. And when I left, I didn’t bring him with me.”

She left him at the circus, left him with Trick, and she doubts he would’ve run away with her after what she walked in on, but she didn’t even ask. 

“Clara.” Maddie eases the tablet from Clara’s hands, forces Clara to look at her. “Are you compromised?”

Those are trigger words, ones that mean she’ll get pulled from the op.

Clara takes her tablet back. “No. Now, Tony’s vulnerable when he leaves the mansion. He’s been burying himself in his workshop and doing some kind of experiments, but he hasn’t shown much interest in leaving. I think that’s going to change.”

“What man says, ‘someone’s shooting at me, let me make it easier for them?’” Maddie asks.

“One who’s desperate to show he’s not afraid,” Clara answers.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to child abuse. Also minor character death. If you want to know who, spoilers in the end notes.

After the excitement on the roof there’s a whole lot of nothing.

They increase their security, increase their vigilance, but there aren’t any signs of Barney or anyone else.

There’s no more late night pizza in Tony’s workshop or him pestering her while she swims. In fact, she barely seems him at all after the incident on the roof. 

It’s for the best. She needs to be focused. She’s not here to be Tony’s friend. She’s here to keep him from dying. 

Which makes it so much more embarrassing when Stark  _ disappears _ .

One minute, he’s in his workshop, and the next time Clara checks in with Jarvis, the AI hesitantly says, “Sir is no longer on the premises.”

Clara pushes up off the wall and is on her feet in an instant. “What do you mean he’s no longer on the premises?”

“He is not here,” Jarvis says.

“Let me into the workshop,” Clara says.

“Sir has not given me permission to do that.”

“Where did he go?”

“Sir has not given me permission to disclose that information.”

Clara has a few choice things to say about ‘sir’ and his AI, but she bites them down and gets on the comms instead. “Coulson, Stark is gone.”

“Gone?” Coulson immediately responds.

“He’s vanished from his workshop. The AI won’t tell me where he went or how he got out, only that he isn’t in there anymore.”

“We’ve got cameras that aren’t connected to the AI,” Coulson says. “Find the rest of the team and scour the footage until you see something useful. We’ll start working the problem from our end.”

“Yes, sir,” Clara says.

Failure sits heavy in her stomach as she goes up to their suite, because Tony was in his workshop, and she was the only one on duty. Patel and Maddie are watching some movie on the big ass TV in their living room.

“Get Sorel,” Clara tells Patel. “And get your tablets. Stark is missing.”

Maddie immediately turns the TV off. Within minutes, the four of them are around the kitchen table, tablets out, each looking at different camera footage.

“He’s been gone for no more than 30 minutes,” Clara says. “He was in his workshop and then the next time I checked in, he wasn’t.”

Their surveillance footage isn’t great, they relied too heavily on the AI, the AI that’s now refusing to help them, and Clara forces a few deep breaths. It’s not Jarvis’s fault Clara and her team got sloppy. She should’ve realized that an AI controlled by Tony Stark would be helpful only when Tony wanted it to be.

When they get Tony back she’s going to punch him in the face.

Because they are going to get him back. 

“I don’t think it’s a kidnapping,” she says. It’s not much comfort. “Jarvis would’ve been more helpful if it was. Right, Jarvis?”

“Sir left of his own free will,” Jarvis says.

Still, Tony slipping his security detail means dozens of opportunities for him to get kidnapped. And Clara bets Barney and whatever crew he’s running with have eyes on the mansion. If they find Tony before Clara can...No. She’s not thinking about. They’re going to find him. They’re -

“Aw, hell,” she says.

There’s a blur of motion on the camera she’s got, but when she slows it down, clears it up, it’s obvious what she’s seeing.

“Coulson?” she says, making sure he’s still with them.

“Report, Hawkeye.”

“He built himself a new suit.”

It’s sleeker than the one she saw him escape the compound in, but she knows a suit of armor when she sees one. It has the same glowing chest plate, the same glowing eyes. That explains what he’s been doing in his workshop for the past two months. No wonder he didn’t want anyone poking around in there.

“He’s airborne,” Clara says, “Do we have any way to track him?”

“Do we know what he’s doing?” Coulson asks.

“Joyride?” Patel offers.

“Look through earlier footage,” Coulson says. “See if something may have sparked his decision to leave.”

“Jarvis?” Clara asks. 

“I cannot assist you with your search,” Jarvis says, “but my memory banks have not been wiped.”

“World is getting too complicated for me,” Sorel says. “Robots and AIs and bears, oh my.”

“Wait until they put your credit card into a chip in your arm,” Patel says. 

“I’m getting a team of juniors to look through footage,” Coulson says. “We’re going to comb through the past three days and figure out where he went.”

It takes three hours and ten junior agents helping them, but then Junior Agent Nakamoto says, “I think I have something,” and Coulson beams them the footage of Tony being confronted by Christine Everhart at a ball the other night.

“She’s a journalist,” Coulson says. They can see her showing Tony something - a paper or pictures maybe - but they don’t have the right angle to see what exactly. 

It’s obvious the way Tony stiffens when he sees it. It’s obvious that his smile is fake as they continue their conversation, but he remains polite if not distant until he can escape. It’s the only incident they’ve found that suggests anything.

Coulson keeps the juniors looking and starts his team on pursuing the Everhart angle.

“We need to know what those pictures were,” Clara says.

“She’s a very  _ prominent _ journalist,” Coulson says. “We have to be careful with our questions.”

“Fuck careful,” Clara says. 

Clara isn’t invited to question the woman.

She’s tempted to break into the interrogation room anyways, because the woman sits in her chair, smug, like she’s better than all of them and doesn’t tell them a damn thing.

“Mr. Stark and I had a private conversation,” she says. “Why are you so interested?”

“Mr. Stark’s safety is our concern,” Coulson says, looking every bit the government agent in his pressed suit and tie. All he needs is sunglasses. Clara doesn’t understand why she couldn’t be part of the interrogation - sorry, questioning. The woman is clearly already forming a story in her head about government spies and breaches of privacy.

“And you think I’m a danger to him?” she asks. She smiles like a woman who knows she’s attractive. Clara wants to break her nose. 

“You showed him some pictures,” Coulson says, unruffled. “I’m curious as to what they were of.”

“None of your business.”

“Blackmail, then?”

“Hardly,” she says, “but it’s my story. I won’t let you or anyone else break it. And I won’t let you bury it, either.”

“But you told Mr. Stark what it was?”

“Professional courtesy,” she says. Something else, too, Clara thinks. 

“Mr. Stark is now missing,” Coulson says. “So you can see why I’m interested in what you showed him.”

She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “I’d start looking at nearby bars. I showed him something he didn’t want to see, and we all know how Mr. Stark deals with his problems.”

“Permission to search her high rise for the pictures?” Clara asks.

Coulson doesn’t turn to look at her through the one way glass, but she can imagine the slight frown on his face when he says, “Permission denied.”

Everhart looks interested again. “Who are you talking to?”

“Mr. Stark’s security team,” Coulson says. He stands up. “I have to put together a team to search the bars. I’ll have someone come keep you company.”

“Am I a person of interest?” Everhart asks.

“Yes,” Coulson answers. “You can include that in the story you’re writing. If something happens to Mr. Stark, be sure to include that you could’ve assisted in his rescue but chose not to. I’m sure your dedication to journalistic integrity will increase your readership.”

“You’re not going to convince me to answer questions I don’t want to answer,” she says. “Especially not with a few snarky comments.”

“No,” Coulson agrees, “but I am going to hold you here until your story becomes obsolete.”

When he walks out she’s still spluttering.

“Can we do that?” Clara asks when Coulson meets her in the observation room.

“No.”

Clara didn’t think so. She follows him down the hall. “We’re not going to search the bars, are we? I think we would’ve heard about a man in a suit of armor already if he was somewhere with a civilian population.”

“We -”

A junior agent sprints up to Coulson, face red, out of breath. “Lt. Colonel Rhodes is on the line.” He hands a phone over.

“Agent Coulson.”

They go back to the viewing room and Coulson puts the phone on speaker.

“ -projectile that apparently is Tony. Did you lose track of him by any chance?”

“We did,” Coulson says. “He disappeared from his residence in a flying suit of armor.”

Rhodey sighs. “We almost blew him out of the air. He’s about to have an unpleasant chat with the US Armed Forces.”

“He has another one waiting for him here as well,” Coulson says.

“Robot suit,” Rhodey says, like he can’t quite believe it. “I figured if he was missing you guys were probably tearing your hair out. He’s safe, and I’ll make sure to hand deliver him to you.”

“Appreciated,” Coulson says.

They hang up, and Clara allows herself a moment of ‘I’m glad he’s not dead’ before anger sweeps through her. “Did Rhodey say what Stark was doing?”

“No,” Coulson says, “but I trust you to figure it out when he returns.”

“And Everhart?” Clara asks.

“No longer useful. I’ll arrange for her release.”

“Do you think she knew about the robot suit?”

“It’d be all anyone was talking about if she did.” Coulson reaches between them to put his hand on Clara’s shoulder. “He designed a suit capable of flight and escaped his mansion. You couldn’t have predicted that.”

“He’s still my responsibility,”

“Go back to the mansion,” Coulson tells her. “Prepare for his arrival.”

“Yes, sir,” Clara says.

~*~

The other three agents are adding more cameras to the mansion, now that they’re aware that Jarvis can’t be relied on. 

Clara’s pacing the living room, and when Stark comes in, suit of armor nowhere to be seen but a giant grin on his face, she stops and glares at him.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she demands.

The smile freezes on his face before it becomes something sharper, its own kind of armor. “Guess I don’t have to ask if you missed me.”

“We’re responsible for your safety,” Clara says. “You can’t just vanish like that.”

“I’m sure Rhodey’s already tattled,” Stark says, going straight for the bar. “I’ve got a suit of armor. I don’t need you to protect me anymore. I can protect myself.”

“You’re pretty damn stupid for a genius,” she says.

“I’ll actually be safer without you,” Stark says. “You leave, your brother leaves, right?”

Clara wishes she had her bow on her, wishes she could shoot that fucking glass of scotch out of his hand. 

“You being a dick isn’t going to stop me from doing my job,” she says. “Where did you go?”

“Vegas. They don’t ask questions there. Maybe I should go back.”

“Where,” Clara says, forcing herself to take a deep breath, “did you go?”

Anger is one of her least favorite emotions. Emotions in general make her feel out of control, but at least when she’s crying or scared or any of the others, she’s the only one affected. When she gets angry, she wants to hit people. She wants to grab them by the wrist until there are bruises, wants to grab them by the back of the neck and shake.

She feels like her father.

Abruptly, her anger is replaced with nausea. 

“You were missing,” Clara says. “Did you think about anyone other than yourself? Do you know what happened last time you went missing?”

“No, I forgot about the months of torture,” Tony says. “I went to fight them, if you have to know. The Ten Rings were targeting Gulmira. They were using weapons  _ I  _ made to wipe Yinsen’s home off the map. I had the ability to stop it so I did. I even made it back before curfew.”

Clara’s nails cut into her palms. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“And let you stop me?”

Clara rolls her eyes. “You designed a flying robot suit. You really think I’m equipped to stop that? I know Jarvis was with you, no way he stonewalled us without your say so. You could’ve waited until you were across the Atlantic and then told us. But no. You wanted us to fucking worry. Again.”

“I prefer Iron Man,” Stark says. He pours himself another glass of scotch. “Much catchier than flying robot suit. And I apologize,  _ Agent Barton _ . I’m not used to working with a team. I’m more of a solo guy.”

“Pepper was worried.”

Stark pauses, glass halfway to his lips. For a second, he actually looks contrite. “Dirty pool.”

Clara shrugs. “When you went missing we contacted her first to see if you were at SI or if you had any appointments planned. You didn’t. You might want to give her a call.”

He glares at her as he pulls out his phone.

“Oh, and Christine Everhart might be publishing a piece on you and shady government agencies. We had some questions for her, too.”

Stark holds his phone up to her ear and continues to glare at her. “She’s a reporter and you brought her into your office?”

“Told her you were missing,” Clara adds. “She wasn’t very helpful finding you. She should get a decent headline out of the whole experience.”

“I don’t like you,” Stark says. Then his eyes go wide. “Not you, Ms. Potts. I like you. I was talking to someone else. I - uh -”

Clara can hear a raised voice from the other end of the line but she can’t make out any of the words. She watches Stark shrink the more Pepper talks and feels a little vindication. She still wants to punch something, though.

She goes to find Madison. Maybe they can get some hand-to-hand in.

~*~

That’s how Stark finds her again, sparring in the living room of her suite. They moved all the furniture to the walls, and Clara already fought with Madison and Patel and now she’s sparring with Sorel. She’s exhausted after so many bouts, but there’s still that burning in her veins, the simmering anger that she can’t get out no matter how hard she tries.

Your father’s blood running through your veins, part of her says.

She stumbles and Sorel’s fist connects with her chest, sending her to the ground, gasping for breath.

“Shit,” Sorel says. “I thought you were going to block that.”

Clara rolls onto her hands and knees. “My fault. Lost focus.”

“That looked painful,” Stark says from the doorway.

“You done trying to drink through your entire liquor cabinet?” Clara asks.

“I came down here to offer you pizza,” Tony says.

It’s the closest he’ll get to an apology. Clara gets to her feet. “Better buy a lot. I’m not sharing with you.”

Tony shrugs. “You three? In or out?”

“Why not,” Madison says. “I could eat.”

“I’m in,” Sorel says.

“I’ll make something,” Patel says. “Unless you’ve got a vegan pizzeria.”

“I could probably find one,” Tony says. 

“It’s fine,” Patel says. “Did you really build a robot suit?”

“Iron Man,” Tony sighs. “It’s called the  _ Iron Man  _ suit.”

Clara goes to shower and when she comes out, there are five pizza boxes on the counter. She pokes through them until she finds an untouched box of pepperoni and mushroom. She brings the entire box over to her spot.

“I talked to Agent,” Tony says. “Told him you guys could go home. But he said no.”

Clara grins, imaging how that conversation must have went. 

“You have a suit,” Sorel says, “That doesn’t make you invincible.”

“Or trained,” Clara says. “Sorel and Madison have been agents for a little over 10 years. I’ve been an agent for almost that long, and Patel’s going on 7 years. That experience counts for more than your suit.”

“My suit’s pretty badass,” he says.

“We’re still not going anywhere,” Clara tells him.

“Maybe I should make you a suit,” Tony says. “Something arrows can’t pierce.”

“Thanks, but I’m good. I make my living not being noticed. Your suit isn’t exactly subtle.”

“Sexy, though.”

Clara laughs despite herself. “Was that condition number one?”

“You bet it was.”

Later, after the leftover pizza is in the fridge and Tony has left to do something productive, and Clara’s getting ready for bed, Madison says, “I see why you like him.”

She holds her hand up before Clara can protest. “Not like that. In a general sort of way. There’s a halfway decent guy buried under all that ego and dickishness.”

“Don’t tell him that,” Clara says. “He works really hard to make sure it stays buried.”

Madison laughs. “I can’t wait until I tell Mariah and Mason that I ate pizza with Tony Stark.”

“I did that when I was 17,” Clara says. “Not that big a deal.”

“Your life is so much more exciting than mine,” Madison says. She gets into bed with Clara. “I think I might miss this assignment when it’s over.”

“You’re going to miss the bed, you mean. With all the over-time from this op, I bet you could buy a bed like this.”

“Mm,” Madison says, closing her eyes. “Good plan.”

Clara rolls her eyes, but, in her head, she admits that it’s a pretty nice bed.

~*~

The day after Tony’s trip to Gulmira, the man is on his best behavior. He hangs out in visible spaces in the mansion and when he does go to the workshop, he lets Clara tag along and shows her the new cell phone design he’s working on.

“Pepper says cellphones are a big market. Tablets too. She thinks we can keep SI from becoming irrelevant if we get out in front of a few things.”

“SI’s successful because of you,” Clara says. “Make whatever you want.”

“Bridges?” he jokes.

She shrugs.

“I’m thinking about energy, maybe. Try to do some good, you know?”

“I shoot people for a living,” Clara reminds him. 

“The biggest baddest assassin with the smallest kill count,” Tony says. “I hacked your file. You’ve actually stuck to your principles.”

“I told SHIELD where the line was and they’ve respected it.”

“Huh.”

~*~

Two days after Tony’s trip to Gulmira is when everything goes to hell.

Clara’s reviewing footage in her room when Jarvis says, “There’s an intruder on the roof.”

“Armed?” Clara asks, already reaching for her bow and quiver. 

“Yes. I believe -” 

Jarvis’s voice cuts out. 

“Jarvis?” Clara taps her ear piece. “Coulson?”

There’s no response. From either. 

Fuck.

The lights in the mansion flicker, and Clara slips out her window and scales the wall of the mansion until she’s on the roof. Barney’s there, inspecting an arrow that’s sparking at where it’s embedded in some sort of box.

“Easiest security dismantle I’ve ever done,” he says.

“I’m not going to let you hurt him,” Clara says.

They both have their bows drawn. Clara doesn’t want to shoot her brother. She’s not sure how he feels about shooting her.

Barney laughs. “He’s called the Merchant of Death for a reason. And I know you’re not protecting him out of loyalty, because you don’t have any. Is he fucking you, then? I’d think he’d be a bit more picky but -”

Clara lets an arrow loose, but Barney dodges it, fires one in her direction. She rolls out of the way, and she’s reaching for another arrow when Barney gets to her. He rips the bow out of her hands and tosses it over the roof. He tosses his, too.

“What are you doing?” she demands.

He takes a swing at her, and she dodges, but it exposes her back, and he grabs her arrows out of her quiver and lets them drop off the side.

“You’re better than me with a bow,” he says. He backs up, unstraps his quiver and pitches it over the side. “I want to see how evenly matched we are with everything else.”

“You’re crazy,” she tells him. Her arrows are gone. Her blow gun is stashed safely in her room. She doesn’t have any way to knock him out. She’s going to have to fight him. 

“I prefer curious,” he says. There’s a gleam in his eye she doesn’t like. He looks like he wants to  _ hurt _ her. “You never wondered which one of us was better?”

“No,” she answers truthfully. “You’re my brother. I didn’t care which one of us was better. I just wanted you with me.”

He pretends to wipe a tear away. “That why you bailed on me? On the circus?”

“You were stealing! You were running it into the ground!”

This is ridiculous. Tony Stark’s rooftop is not the place to hash out her childhood trauma. Tony’s possibly in danger, and Clara can’t contact anyone on her team. She needs to get Barney out of the way and find Stark. She scans the rooftop for any kind of weapon she can use.

There’s the pool in the center, the bar, and a grill. Nothing useful. Nothing she can subdue him with.

“And what do you think happened when you left?” he demands. “When the star of the show disappeared?”

“Trick was teaching you, too,” she says.

His expression turns murderous. “Don’t you talk about Trick. You don’t have the right. He gave everything to us.  _ Everything _ . And you killed him.”

“He was going to kill me,” Clara says. “I did what I had to do.”

“No one came to the circus to see me,” Barney says. “I wasn’t  _ The Amazing Hawkeye _ . We couldn’t draw the crowds we needed to. Trick and I, we got out before everything went completely to shit. And we did what we do best.”

“Stealing,” Clara says.

“Because you have so much room to talk,” he says. “How many people have you killed with that fancy bow of yours? How many governments have you meddled in? Don’t tell me you actually believe you’re fighting the good fight. You’re dumb, but not that dumb.”

Clara wishes she still had her bow. She needs the familiar comfort of the grip in her hands. She needs the calm pulling the string back gives her. She can’t do this. She won’t fight Barney. 

She has to.

“You shot me,” she says.

“You were going to ruin the heist. I couldn’t let you.”

“You  _ shot _ me,” she says, because she never hurt him, not like that, “and when Trick realized I couldn’t get away, he decided he was going to kill me. You left me there to die.”

“No,” Barney says.

“ _ Yes _ .”

“You left first.”

“We’re not five anymore!” Clara shouts. “I’m not going to have this fight with you. You and Trick were screwing the circus over so I found something else. It wasn’t some big conspiracy against you. I didn’t leave because I wanted you to suffer, and I didn’t join SHIELD to track you down and make your life hell. I never came after you.”

“No,” Barney says. “You didn’t. I could’ve left you with Mom and Dad. You could’ve died in that fucking car with them, but you didn’t, because  _ I  _ saved  _ you _ . And you fucking left me first chance you got.”

“You wouldn’t’ve come with me.”

“No,” he agrees. “Spend my life serving the Man? I got a life of freedom. Answer to no one but myself. Take only jobs I want.”

“You knew I was here when you took this job,” Clara says. “So who’s the shittier sibling now?”

“You still don’t get it,” Barney says. “You  _ are _ the job.”

Before Clara can ask what the hell that means, a red and gold bullet shoots out of the workshop. He’s flying away from the mansion, and Clara can breathe easier, because Tony’s safe. He’s getting away from danger. He - 

She’s tackled from the side, grunting as Barney takes her down to the ground. The poolside has bits of gravel imbedded in the cement and it scrapes her cheek. She twists, getting on her back so she can block Barney’s swing. 

“You’re not getting Stark,” Clara hisses, shoving him off her.

“I’m not here for Stark,” Barney says. “He’s someone else’s problem.”

He rolls with her shove, but keeps a hold of her arm, and she’s forced to go with him or possibly break something. 

He gets her under him easier than he should. She blames it on being distracted by Tony. If Barney isn’t after him then he’s a distraction. Which means Tony is fleeing an attack or running right into a trap.

Barney’s fist collides with her face and brings her attention back to him.

Her lip stings. The inside of her mouth got cut on her teeth. She can taste the blood. 

She looks up at her brother. He’s got her legs pinned by his knees, and his elbows dig into her biceps, holding her in place.

“Not so amazing without your bow, are you?” he asks. 

He fits his hands around her neck and squeezes.

She struggles, but it only pushes the soft parts of her into the hard points of his knees and elbows. She doesn’t have any leverage. Her hands flail, nothing near her to fight back with.

“That’s all you ever were,” he says, “Just a girl with a bow.”

She’s choking, throat struggling against the pressure he’s putting on it, airway trying to stay open, trying to pull oxygen in. He has to lean forward to press harder, and his elbows come off her arms. They’re free, but she doesn’t have the strength to fight him off. 

Her vision is going hazy, and the face above her distorts. It looks older, twisted with anger. It looks like -

“Dad?” she gasps.

The laugh is hard, and it’s sharp, the edges not dulled by alcohol. Not Dad.

“Stupid bitch,” Barney says.

Barney.

She reaches towards his foot, pulls the knife out of his boot. He’s the one who taught her to keep one there. The one who taught her never to go anywhere without a weapon. It’s a different knife than hers, but she sticks it in his stomach.

He grunts, surprised, grip loosening on her neck.

She sucks in a breath and  _ pulls _ , knife dragging up.

It’s warm, she thinks, as blood and maybe a few organs spill onto her. 

The hands around her neck fall away.

Barney drops on top of her.

He’s still heavy.

His forehead hits hers. She thinks it might have hurt. But now their foreheads are touching. They’re pressed close to each other like when they used to hide under the bed, clinging to each other, hoping Dad wouldn’t find them.

That was before Clara learned the best place to hide was up.

Dad always found them under the bed. He always grabbed Barney first, because Barney tucked Clara between the wall and his body.

Barney always told her to keep quiet, to stay there and be still and Dad wouldn’t know.

She screamed every time Dad tried to rip Barney away. She didn’t let go, got dragged out from under the bed with her brother. 

Every time he would hit them both. 

Barney always told her she was stupid after it, told her she should just stay and keep her mouth shut.

But he always hugged her after.

He’s hugging her now.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She should’ve stayed still, she should’ve stayed quiet. Maybe no one would’ve noticed her.

Barney doesn’t answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barney dies.


	10. Chapter 10

It’s cold. 

There’s a heavy weight on her chest, and she’s cold.

The sun’s gone down.

Clara looks around. She’s on the roof of the mansion.

She’s on the roof of the mansion and it’s nighttime and -

Barney’s on top of her.

Barney’s  _ dead body _ is on top of her.

She pushes him off and then throws up in the opposite direction. She killed Barney. Her brother. He’s dead because of her. She took his knife and -

She throws up again.

Once she’s done throwing up, she looks around.

There’s vomit on one side of her. There’s a body on another. She’s soaked through with blood.

She doesn’t know what to do.

She doesn’t know what to do and there’s no one in her ear to help her.

The box Barney shot has finally stopped sparking.

“Jarvis?” she asks. Her voice sounds far away.

Jarvis doesn’t answer.

Clara gets to her feet. There are tiki torches set up around the pool. They’re glowing, must be powered by fire and not electricity.

Fire.

She looks over at her brother.

They watched the Star Wars movies together. He loved them, snuck her into the theater to watch ‘em when they came out. Every town they stopped near they would sneak in until Clara had the whole thing memorized.

She looks at the long stretch of the bar, at the grill next to it.

She walks over to investigate.

It doesn’t take long to get a fire burning on top of the bar. It takes longer to get her brother on top of it. After a moment of thought, she strips off her bloodied SHIELD t-shirt and covers the gaping wound in his chest.

Gutted, she thinks.

Her stomach protests, but she doesn’t have anything left to vomit.

Her brother wanted to be buried like a Jedi. They watched  _ Return of the Jedi _ and he was transfixed by the scene with Luke and Darth Vader. Her brother isn’t a Jedi, and he isn’t Anakin Skywalker, and she’s not Luke, but she feels a bit of peace watching the flames lick around his body.

She’s finally done something he wanted.

She stands there until the clothes and skin and fat has burned away. She stands there in her blood soaked sports bra and blood stained pants and watches until her brother is just a pile of bones. 

She leaves the fire still going and goes back into the mansion. None of the lights are on, and none of them turn on as she walks forward, no Jarvis to anticipate where she’s going or what she needs. The house is empty without Jarvis.

It’s what her head feels like.

She needs to contact SHIELD. 

Tony might be in danger.

Where’s her team?

Is Coulson okay?

She wanders into her bedroom. She puts a new SHIELD t-shirt on. The letters stick to her wet sports bra. Blood begins to seep into the new shirt, spreading out across her chest. 

She finds her phone on the ground.

She has over a dozen missed calls.

She calls Hill.

“Hawkeye?” Hill asks, a mix of panic and relief in her voice. “Where have you been?”

Distracted, she thinks. “Detained. Report?”

“Stane and Stark battled in robot suits. Stark survived, Coulson’s with him now. I can’t reach any of your team. Were they with you?”

“Negative,” Clara says. Her voice is evening out, recognizing her job, recognizing what it’s supposed to do. She’s getting dried blood on her phone. She should wash her hands.

“Potts says Stane attacked Stark at the mansion. He might have had our team subdued. Search the mansion for any signs. We have a team coming to join you.”

“I don’t need backup,” she says. It’s a couple hours too late.

“It’s a long flight from DC to Malibu,” she says. “They’re already in the air. They should be landing soon.”

They hang up.

Tony’s safe. Good. He was the priority.

No.

You  _ are _ the job.

No.

She drops her phone and presses her hands to her ears.

No, no, no.

She needs to pull herself together. 

She needs to find the others.

Bodies?

No.

Hope.

They could still be alive. They need to be alive.

She picks up her phone and starts her search. She takes Madison’s spare gun from her bag. All Clara has is Barney’s bloody knife, tucked into her boot. Her bow is somewhere on the side of the road. Probably got run over.

She finds signs of a struggle in Stark’s living room. 

She finds crushed SHIELD issue cellphones in the kitchen.

She wanders around the floor until she hears muffled shouting.

Only one door in the hallway is locked. 

Without Jarvis, it’s easy to pick. 

The door swings open and there’s her team, trapped in a linen closet. Sheets, pillowcases, extra blankets. Nothing they could use for escape. She won’t write them up.

“Holy shit,” Madison says. “You’re covered in blood.”

Oh, right.

“Stark’s fine,” Clara says. Her voice sounds wrong again.

“I’m not worried about him.” Madison pushes out of the closet, Sorel and Patel frozen in place behind her.

“I’m fine,” Clara says. “Not my blood.”

“You’re not fine,” Madison says. “You have your phone?”

Clara hands it over.

Madison tosses it back. “One of you contact SHIELD. We need help.”

“Situation under control,” Clara says. “I checked in with Hill. Coulson’s with Stark and Potts. Both are safe. It was Stane.”

“Yeah,” Madison says, leading Clara back to the living room. “Figured that one out when he jumped us. Fucking embarrassing.”

“We had no reason to think it was an inside job.”

Madison guides Clara down onto one of the kitchen stools. She’s waving her finger in front of Clara’s eyes. Clara ignores it.

“If Stane got us, who got you?” Sorel asks.

Apparently, Sorel followed them into the kitchen. Patel is back by the couch, talking to someone on the phone.

“I -” Clara frowns when Madison wets a washcloth. “That’s not going to help.”

“Shh,” Madison says and starts washing the blood off her face.

Clara sits there and lets herself be cleaned like a child. 

She doesn’t know how much time passes before the lights flicker again and Jarvis says, “Hello?”

“You’re back,” Clara says.

“Sir has rerouted my power,” Jarvis says.

“Stark’s back?” Sorel asks.

“I knew I was growing on you,” Tony says, and Clara spins in her chair to see Stark hobbling into the room, assisted on one side by Pepper and Coulson on the other. 

They all stop when they see her.

“Agent Hill said you were detained,” Coulson says, leaving Stark’s side to come over to her. 

Madison steps out of the way. Coulson starts waving his finger around, too. 

“Would people stop doing that?” she asks, batting his hand away.

“Hawkeye, what did you mean by detained?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Jarvis says, “but there appears to be a fire on the roof. It is contained at the moment and appears to have been burning for some time.”

“That was me,” Clara says. Then, to Tony, “You’re going to have to resurface your roof, sorry.”

“Um,” Tony says.

“I believe what Hawkeye is referring to are the several large blood stains,” Jarvis says. 

“That was also me,” Clara says.

“Can we get back to the part where the roof is on fire?” Tony asks. “Do I need to call someone?”

“It appears to be a funeral pyre,” Jarvis says. “There are the remains of a human being on the coals.”

Human being. So formal. 

Clara starts to slip from her stool, but Coulson catches her, strong, steady, his hands keeping her from falling. 

“Thanks, sir,” she says. 

“Agent Barton,” he says.

She can’t help her flinch.

“Who were you detained by?”

“Do I really need to answer that, sir?”

Agent Coulson’s eyes are sad as he looks her over. “Not until the official debrief.”

“I lost my bow,” she says. “Went off the side of the roof.”

“We’ll recover it,” Coulson promises.

She nods. She lets herself slip further into Coulson’s hold. He’s here now, and he’ll take care of everything. That’s what handlers are for. She doesn’t have to fight anymore. Doesn’t have to stay alert. Doesn’t even have to keep her eyes open.

“Glad you’re here, sir,” she mumbles and then she goes under.

~*~

She wakes up in medical.

Her sheets are white and her hospital gown is white with little flowers - yellow, blue, orange, no red. 

She looks at her hands.

Clean.

Under her fingernails.

Also clean.

The TV above her bed shows Tony Stark at a press conference. He looks better than the last time she saw him. The byline running under the video reads ‘Shocking confession: I AM IRON MAN’. The video cuts away from the press conference to footage from what Clara assumes was the robot battle between Stark and Stane.

“Coulson wanted to be here when you woke up.”

Clara startles and turns to see Agent Hill leaning against the doorway to her room.

“Fury told him he had to clean up his mess first,” Hill nods towards the screen. “I don’t think that’s what the Director had in mind.”

“You wanted Tony Stark to keep a secret?” Clara asks. She laughs.

It hurts.

And her voice is rustier than she thought it would be.

“Your throat is bruised,” Hill tells her.

Ah. That would explain it.

“Uh, not that I don’t appreciate the company, but why is a Senior Agent here?” Clara asks.

“How much do you remember about what happened?” Hill asks.

Clara tilts her bed up so she’s sitting up. “Stark disappeared. It was a revenge trip. He came back. We had pizza.”

Hill nods, her face not giving anything away. That’s the face of an agent looking for information, who doesn’t want to corrupt the answers given. Something big must have happened. Something big that Clara can’t remember right now.

“We had a good day. Quiet. Then -”

Barney.

The roof.

Clara’s too hot. Her blankets are pressing down on her, hot like blood, seeping into her skin. She kicks them off, arms flailing when she can’t get them off fast enough. They’re on the floor, but it’s still not enough. She grabs at her gown.

She’s too hot. It’s too much. She -

Someone injects her with something and everything goes dark.

~*~

The next time Clara wakes up, Dr. Lamar is with her.

“What’s the prognosis, doc?” Clara asks. “Am I going to live?”

Dr. Lamar cracks a small smile. “You will. You have a present.”

She points to a gigantic edible arrangement. Clara didn’t realize they made them that big.

“Secret admirer?” Clara asks.

Dr. Lamar hands her the card that came with it. “You tell me.”

_ You’ve got good instincts too. Call if you need anything _ followed by Tony’s signature and a phone number. Clara folds the card back up.

“Just a friend,” she says.

“You have other friends who are waiting to see you,” Dr. Lamar says. “You feel up to visitors?”

“Is friend code for Dr. Suresh?” Clara asks.

She knows what’s in her head, what’s lurking at the edge of her memory, waiting until it can swoop down and get her. She’s not going to let it.

“I wasn’t aware you two were friendly,” Dr. Lamar says.

“You’re the only doctor I want to see,” Clara says. She doesn’t want to talk about what happened. She doesn’t even want to think about it. “So as long as my friends aren’t doctors, they can come in.”

Dr. Lamar smiles. “Okay. And if you want a break, you know where the call nurse button is. No one wants to overwhelm you.”

Clara’s afraid that means everyone’s going to tiptoe around her, but Mason wheels in with her usual smile on her face and starts going a mile a minute about what Clara missed while she was in Malibu, and Mariah interrupts to scold Clara for not getting a tan, and Burns just starts picking at her pineapple stars.

“What?” Burns asks when everyone stares at her. “Oh.” She holds one out to Clara. “Hungry?”

Clara thinks about trying to swallow a chunk of pineapple and winces. “I’m good for now.”

Madison lurks in the doorway of the room, the only one not to come all the way in, the only one who hasn’t said anything yet. Her eyes keep flicking to Clara’s neck and away, guilty, and Clara can’t have that. None of this was Madison’s fault.

“You manage to talk Stark into letting you keep your mattress?” Clara asks.

Maddie startles at being spoken to. “Didn’t fit in the jet.”

“We need bigger jets,” Clara says.

Maddie smiles, hesitant, but there, and Clara leans back against her bed and lets them to all the talking for the rest of their visit.

When they leave, she’s oddly exhausted from doing nothing. 

Dr. Lamar brings her a smoothie and Clara drinks the whole thing before going back to sleep.

She wakes up screaming, clawing at invisible hands around her neck and someone forces her hands down, away from her neck. She struggles but she doesn’t get anywhere. It’s like Barney all over again. She’s pinned. She’s going to die. She’s -

“Hawkeye!” A sharp voice brings her out of her panic.

The lights in her room are dimmed because she was sleeping, but she can make out Agent Coulson in what light there is. 

It’s Coulson holding her down.

She relaxes and he lets up his grip.

There’s blood under her fingernails.

He gets a bucket under her in time for her to puke.

“Sorry about that, sir,” she says when she’s done.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he tells her. He pulls a chair up next to her bed.

“Did you just get back?” she asks.

“Apparently Tony Stark is high maintenance,” Coulson says.

She laughs, and it feels good even though it hurts. 

“He’s going to be even more impossible now that he has his suit,” Coulson says.

“I saw the news. I’m guessing the announcement wasn’t in your plans?”

“I had notecards,” Coulson says. There’s a little pout on his face.

He goes to rummage through one of the cabinets until he comes back with a bottle of mouthwash. Clara takes it, grateful to get the taste of vomit out of her mouth. 

“Is he going to work with us?” Clara asks.

“As much as Tony Stark works with other people,” Coulson says. His expression softens and he brushes her hair out of her face. “Barton -  _ Clara _ -”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Not with anyone. Not with you. Or Dr. Suresh. No one.”

“Okay,” he says again.

She knows she’ll have to talk. They won’t let her back in the field until she does. She doesn’t want to do it. Maybe if Natasha were here. Maybe she could tell Natasha. But she’s not sure Natasha would understand. They made sure Natasha didn’t have family, made sure she was disconnected from people.

Clara still wishes she was here.

~*~

Clara spends a week in medical even though she doesn’t have any major injuries.

It’s better than being in a padded room somewhere so she doesn’t complain.

She talks to Dr. Suresh because she has to sooner or later and maybe sooner means getting back in the field.

Three weeks after being let out of medical, she’s climbing the walls. 

“I need to do something,” Clara says, dropping into Coulson’s office unannounced.

He’s gone back to enforcing her 3 hour limit in the shooting range. There’s only so much training she can do, and it’s not enough. She needs to shut off her brain, needs to stop  _ thinking _ all the time and the only thing that can do that is a bow in her hands.

She needs a mission.

She needs a purpose.

“Please,” she says, when it looks like Coulson is going to protest.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Coulson says.

Clara stays standing in front of his desk. He tries to go back to his work and then looks back at her. He reaches into his desk and pulls something out. It’s a worn copy of the most popular biography on Steve Rogers. He hands it over.

“Really, sir?” she asks.

He looks over at the desk where she spent so much time her first year at SHIELD. She takes the book and goes over to her desk. 

“I’m not writing a report,” she says.

He just smiles and goes back to his computer.

~*~

Three days later, they’re on their way to Puente Antiguo. They flew into Roswell, NM and then got a rental car. They’re going to meet a team at Puente Antiguo, because there have been some strange readings in the area. 

Clara’s got her bow and quiver in the backseat of the rental, and she’s slouched in the passenger seat, boots on the dash, as they pull into a gas station. It almost reminds her of the first road trip she took with Coulson, when they drove from New York City to DC.

“I want donuts,” she says as he gets out of the car.

“What kind?” he asks.

“Both,” she says like it’s obvious.

“You going to stay there?” he asks.

She closes her eyes and pretends to snore. She can hear his huff of laughter before he goes to get them donuts. She decides to be helpful and pulls the car around to one of the pumps. They’re not low, per se, but the fewer stops they take the better.

The fewer stops, the faster they get there, the faster Clara can get a bow in her hands.

Coulson hasn’t complained once this trip even though she plays the music too loud and sings along even louder. It helps keep thoughts out of her head. 

There’s some sort of commotion inside the little quick-mart, but it’s over before Clara can investigate. 

Coulson comes out with two packs of donuts and a frightened woman in a checkered shirt.

“What did you do?” Clara asks, putting the pump back.

Coulson tosses her both packets of donuts. “You get three of each,” he tells her. “I need to call the cops.”

Clara grumbles and gets back into their car. It would serve him right if she ate all the donuts.

She doesn’t.

~*~

The mission is everything she wants it to be.

There’s some sort of strange artifact, but that’s not her division. She’s put up high in a perch with her bow and left to her own devices. It’s quiet and her only job is to watch junior agents scurry around creating a perimeter, setting up camp, and it’s perfect.

There’s some grumbling on the comms when it begins to rain, but Clara tunes it out. 

The rain doesn’t change the fact that she has a job to do, and through the rain, she spots a figure. 

“Unknown headed towards camp,” Clara reports.

“Be prepared to engage,” Coulson says, “but hold until my order.”

Clara draws her bow, tracks the figure as he comes closer to camp. He doesn’t look like any of the disgruntled locals they had to chase out when they arrived. He’s big like some of them had been, muscled, and his long blonde hair hangs in wet clumps around his face.

There’s something desperate about him, and Clara tries not to empathize too much. She might have to shoot him.

He reaches the edge of the camp and starts tossing around their agents like they weigh nothing.

“Sir?” Clara asks.

“I want to see what he does,” Coulson says.

Clara blinks the rain out of her eyes and tracks the target as he easily makes it to the hammer.

Clara finds herself holding her breath when he reaches down to grasp it. If he picks it up - well, that’ll be some pretty Arthurian shit. 

The man grips the hammer and pulls.

Nothing happens.

Clara feels disappointed. 

“Take the shot,” Coulson says.

Clara puts an arrow in the man’s shoulder.

He sinks to his knees even before the paralytic’s started to work. 

Clara packs up her bow and goes down to observe Coulson’s interrogation.

~*~

Coulson doesn’t get anything out of the guy. Not who he works for, not anything about the hammer, just nothing. Clara’s never seen anyone resist Coulson like that.

“He really thought it was his?” Clara asks when Coulson leaves the interrogation room.

She tries to put the look of utter dejection out of her mind, how hopeless he’d looked when he realized the hammer wasn’t going to come off the ground for him.

“He doesn’t seem dangerous,” Coulson says.

“Want me to bring him into town?” Clara asks.

“Yeah,” Coulson says. “Put him up at one of the motels. Tell him to stay in town.”

“You think he’ll listen?”

Coulson shrugs. “Worth a try.”

Clara goes back into the room, and the man - Thor - he calls himself, raises his head to look at her and then looks away.

“Come on, blondie,” Clara says. “Time to go.”

“Go where?”

“We’ll find a room for you,” Clara says. “And I owe you a drink.”

“A drink?” This, at least, seems to have gotten his interest.

“I did shoot you,” Clara says.

He eyes her, curious. “A fine shot,” he says. 

Better than punching her, she figures. 

They drive into town, Clara blasting the heat in the car, because they’re both soaked through with rain. She stops at a motel first and gets him a room. Then, because there’s a bar across the street, she leaves the car and they walk over.

“You got me lodgings?” Thor asks.

“You have somewhere else to stay?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “I have been exiled.”

“Right,” Clara says. She brings him up to the bar and waves the bartender over. “Vodka. Single shot for me. Double for him.”

She rarely drinks, and only on missions. This is the first time she’s had what could be called a social drink. She knows she shouldn’t, that with the month she’s had she won’t stop at one, but she finds she doesn’t care. Whatever she’ll become when she drinks, she’s become even worse sober.

She should’ve gotten herself a double too.

“You do not seem happy, friend,” Thor says.

“Are you for real?” Clara asks. She’s not sure where to start with that. She shot him, they’re not friends. And he looks like someone’s told him Santa’s real and they’re going to stuff his stocking with coal for the rest of his life. And he’s worried about  _ her _ ?

“I am flesh and blood,” Thor says.

“You talk weird,” she tells him.

The bartender brings them their shots.

Clara knocks hers back. “I’m fine,” she says. “Better than you.”

“Is it a competition?” he asks.

Clara hands the bartender the credit card Coulson gave her. “I want to get drunk,” she tells him.

He comes back a few minutes later with the card and a row of shots.

She nudges them towards Thor. “Pick your poison.”

“Poison?” he asks.

“Expression,” she says. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”

He shrugs his massive shoulders. “You would not believe where I’m from.”

“Probably not,” Clara says. “Have a drink. You’re pretty bummed out about that hammer.”

“It was my birthright,” he says.

Two shots later, the world is getting pleasantly fuzzy. 

“So like, you’re grounded?” she asks.

“That is an accurate statement.”

Thor doesn’t seem to be getting drunk. Maybe he’s got too much body mass to get drunk.

“Hmm,” she says. She picks up another shot glass. 

“It was my father,” Thor says. “I displeased him. He was well within his rights to do what he did. I have to earn my hammer back, but I’m afraid I don’t know how.”

“Your dad sounds like a dick.”

Thor’s face scrunches up, confused. “A what?”

“A dick,” Clara says. “You know.” She motions between Thor’s legs.

Thor looks down and frowns. “My father is humanoid.”

Riight, the guy thinks he’s an alien. Clara is either too drunk for this or not drunk enough. She sways, knocks into Thor’s shoulder and decides that’s as good a place as any to rest. 

“It means, like, not a good guy,” Clara tries to explain.

“My father is a king,” Thor says, “He has difficult decisions to make.”

Okay, fathers are not a good topic. It’s fair, Clara doesn’t want to talk about hers either. “You have any other family?”

“I have a mother and brother living,” Thor says.

At the mention of a brother, Clara sits back up. She reaches for another shot glass and misses. Huh, looks like drinking throws off her hand-eye coordination.

“You have family?” Thor asks.

“All dead,” she says.

“My condolences.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t bother. It was a long time ago. Well, my parents. The dead brother is more recent.”

“I would be distraught if I lost Loki,” Thor says. “We don’t always see eye to eye, but he is my brother, and I love him dearly.”

Clara drinks, a little desperate, as Thor starts telling childhood stories about him and his brother. Sure, they’re not all holding-hands-loving-each-other stories, but at least he  _ has _ a brother. Clara interrupts some story that involves cross dressing to slur out, “Fuck your dad.”

Thor looks startled. “What?”

Clara plays with an empty shot glass. “Fuck. Your. Dad.”

“I do not understand.”

“He shouldn’t’ve kicked you out,” Clara says. “This is what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna go back where we just were, and you’re gonna pick up that hammer, because it’s yours and fuck anyone who tells you it’s not. And then, once you’ve got it, you’re going to go home and give your brother a hug.”

“I’m not sure that will work,” Thor says.

“Listen, buddy.” Clara tries to grab the collar of his shirt but misses and ends up petting his collarbone instead. “My brother and I -” swallowing’s difficult. She decides the solution is another drink. She spills some of it bringing the shot glass up to her mouth - “We were kinda like you and your brother. Except we had one fight too many, and I left and the next time we saw each other, he threw a knife at me. Still got a scar.”

Thor makes an outraged sound.

Guy doesn’t even know the half of it. “Time after that, he tried to choke me to death. I sliced his stomach right up. Bled out all over me.”

Thor looks horrified. Clara, oddly, doesn’t feel anything.

Maybe she should get drunk before her next psych session.

“So,” Clara says, because this story has a point, “you’re gonna go pick up that damn hammer and give your brother a hug, because I don’t want you two fighting like Barney and I did. You go home, and you don’t let anything separate you. Not your dad, not some hammer, not a damn thing. You hear me?”

Thor nods, solemn, regal even. “I give you my word.”

“Whatever,” she says. Her head’s getting too heavy to keep up. “I need to lie down.”

“I know of a bed,” Thor says.

The last thing she remembers is him picking her up.

~*~

Clara wakes up when someone bursts through the door, and she immediately wishes she didn’t. Her mouth tastes like a dirty gym sock, and her head feels like it’s about to be split in two, and that’s before someone starts shouting.

“Barton, what the hell did you do!”

She groans and covers her ears. The ringing in her head doesn’t stop.

Someone’s shaking her shoulder.

“Barton!”

“I’m listening,” she groans. 

She cracks an eye open. She doesn’t know where she is. There’s an unfamiliar comforter on the bed she’s on, and she doesn’t recognize any pictures on the walls. She’s -

In a motel room?

She scans the room, eyes finally falling on Coulson.

He’s standing next to the bed, arms crossed over his chest. He looks  _ pissed _ . She’s seen that look on his face before, but never directed at her.

“Sir?” she asks. 

She’s finding it hard to think over the pounding in her head.

“The hammer is gone,” he says. “And you’re in the motel room of our number one suspect.”

“Aw, shit,” she says.

~*~

Coulson gives her the silent treatment the entire way back to DC. He doesn’t speak to her on the car ride to the airport, or when they’re going through security, or even the whole flight back. 

It’s awful.

She has nothing to distract her, nothing to fill her brain with except for thoughts. Once her headache fades - hangovers are their own kind of hell - all that’s left is to think about Barney or what’s going to happen to her when she gets to SHIELD.

This was supposed to be a simple mission.

It was supposed to help her get her head back where it was supposed to be. It was supposed to show that she’s okay.

And she fucked it up.

How badly, she doesn’t know yet.

~*~

Pretty badly, it turns out.

“What were you thinking?” Fury demands as soon as she steps foot into his office.

Coulson, who had led her in, goes to stand next to Fury. Clara feels small and alone on her side of the desk. Once again, she finds herself wishing for Natasha. 

Clara drops her eyes to the floor.

“Agent Barton,” Coulson says, his voice softer than Fury’s but no less demanding. “You were sent with the man who called himself Thor to town to secure a room for him. What happened when you left base?”

Mission report. She can do this. “I got him a room. There was a bar across the street. I felt bad for shooting him so I bought him a drink.”

Shame rises up, but she pushes it down. Mission report. Objective. “It wasn’t just one. I - I couldn’t stop. We talked about our families. He has a brother. I told him to go home to him.”

“He listened,” Fury says. “Walked right back into our base, picked up the hammer and disappeared into the sky.”

“So he was the real deal?” Clara asks.

Fury gives her a sharp look, like she’s getting the wrong lesson here. “We believe Thor was our first alien contact, and due to your actions he is now gone from Earth along with his alien artifact.”

Oh.

_ Due to your actions _ .

This isn’t going to be good.

Fury sighs. “I should’ve done this instead of sending you to New Mexico, so I’m doing it now. Agent Barton, effective immediately, you are on mandatory three months unpaid leave.”

Clara jerks her head up, mouth falling open. “Sir -”

“Argue and I’ll confine you to Dr. Suresh’s office for the entirety of your leave.”

She snaps her mouth shut.

She’s being sent away. 

She’s -

“Bring your ID and weapons to HR to put in safekeeping,” Fury says. 

Clara dares a look at Coulson. He’s standing at Fury’s side, hands clasped behind his back. He looks evenly back at her but doesn’t say anything. 

“Yes, sir,” Clara hears herself saying. 

She makes it to the door before she hears Fury’s voice again.

“Get yourself straightened out,” Fury tells her. “And come back in three months ready to work.”

Clara leaves without another word.

**Author's Note:**

> Clara kills Trickshot as part of a mission.


End file.
